Unlucky
by AJLL
Summary: Kara was picked as the District 12 tribute for the Hunger Games, does she stand a chance of winning? This story assumes that Catching Fire and Mockingjay never occurred. Story gets much better after opening chapters.
1. Chapter 1

This is my first fan fiction ever so I'm sorry if it stinks, but please give it time. And please review, thanks.

Unlucky

I do not own the Hunger Games

I woke up to my mom's voice in my ear. "Kara," she said. "Look at this berry, its dark red, and the juice inside is even darker, can you eat it?" I tried to ignore her, I mean really it's like seven in the morning and this is how she comes to wake me. Not "good morning Kara" or "it's time to get up," nope, she instead starts the day be quizzing me on toxic berries. "Its toxic mom" I murmur, while burying my head in my pillow. "Good" she replies and walks out of my room.

My mom is paranoid that I will be chosen for the reaping; when she was younger her sister was chosen and killed. Her sister was not the fighting type and didn't survive pass the cornucopia. As a result my mother has vowed that any of her children will have a chance, unlike her sister, and since I was eight I have received basic training. I know which plants are toxic, how to hunt for food, how to create fire and shelters, and I know some basic fighting. I'm pretty good with swords and knifes, not to bad with spears and am miserable at archery. Now this does not make me a career, I don't plan on ever being in the games, this is just a precaution. I'm the only person my mother has left she has made sure that if I'm picked for the games I could come home.

Quickly I got ready for school and ran out the door meeting my friend Epi on the way. Epi is my only real friend, sure I talk to a lot of other people, but they are only really acquaintances.

"Are you nervous for tomorrow" she asked me as we briskly walked to school.

"No why should I be? I only have five tickets in." Although my father had died two years ago of lung cancer I didn't have to take tressa since we had saved up some money before he died and because my mom works two jobs to keep me from having any more tickets in.

"Well yeah you do just have five tickets in, but remember five years ago when Primrose Everdeen was chosen, and she only had one ticket in," replied Epi.

Exasperated I replied "are you trying to make me nervous, Epi, I mean really what are you trying to accomplish?"

"Look Kara you asked, and don't worry, you stand a great chance of winning anyways with all the training your mom gave you so it wouldn't matter if you were chosen anyways."

"Thanks Epi." I replied, but I wasn't really that thankful.

I then went through a dull school day, and walked home with Epi. She was chatting animatedly about her new boyfriend of the week, and didn't mention the Hunger Games again. Truth is though I'm really nervous about the reaping tomorrow, and I can't help but wondering how it would affect my mom if I was chosen, how would she take losing everyone.

That night my mom had me work on my swordsmanship skills, it was relaxing after sitting in a desk all day, I got to work off excess energy and didn't have to think about anything. Unfortunately my mom decided that now was the time to discuss my future.

"Kara what do you want to do with your life"

"What do you mean mom," I said exasperated.

"Well your 16 now and soon to be 17, before long you're going to have to leave high school and then what are you going to do with your life. What job do you want to get? I always thought you'd make a great teacher. And you have no boyfriend, when I was your age I had already met your father."

"Mom" I said while attempting to jab her with the edge of my sword, but she blocked it of course, I'm not sure why but she's so great with a sword. "Don't worry about me, just because I don't know what I'm going to do with my life yet does not mean­­­­­­ that it's the end of the world. I've got time."

"Kara I worry about you because you're my only child, and you're a strange one at that, although I love you. Now let's review snares and then you can go to bed"

Reaping Day

I wake up to my mom's face staring down at me. "Mom I know all the edible and poisonous plants in the world by now so please relax, everything is going to be ok."

"I know sweetheart I know, I just wanted to tell you that I made some breakfast, so come downstairs when you're read, ok." Hmm that was strange I thought to myself she never wakes my up without some type of question about toxic berries, or makes breakfast for me. Because to be honest, she's not that good of a cook, so I usually cook. But I guess it is reaping day so if she would do this any day it would be today. I got up and staggered downstairs still a little tired. After breakfast Epi came over before we had to get ready for the reaping. We walked around town talking to each other with both of us knowing perfectly well that this might be the last time we ever saw each.

'"I really think Jared might be the one you know," Epi said.

"Epi" I replied laughing "You've been dating for like a week, how could you possibly know that?"

"It's different with him than with the others, but I guess your right it is kind of early." She said perfectly serious and looking slightly hurt about my laughter. "Anyways with this type of thing I think it's just something you know."

"Well Epi I hope you two will be happy." I replied back, although really I highly doubted she was going to marry Jared, she said similar things about each guy she knew, and as nice as Jared is I don't see him as the right guy for Epi, but whatever.

"What about you Kara, who the lucky guy of your dreams?" she said teasingly, she already knew the answer.

"No one Epi." I had the feeling that whenever I said that she didn't really believe me though, Epi was a hopeless romantic, and probably thought that me having some secret Romeo and Juliet relationship was much more likely than me not liking anyone. I was telling the truth though, and none of the guys here interested me, sure there were some cute ones but no one that I really liked.

After that we got back to our houses and got ready for the reaping which was in two hours. I bathed and then put on a gold dress that my mother and I chose for the occasion. I loved it, it was sparkly and shiny, and use to be my aunt (on my father's side) dress.

"You looked gorgeous sweetheart," my mother told me, with tears in her eyes. "I know that you're never going to be chosen of course, but even so I love you sweetheart."

"Thanks mom," I said slightly embarrassed "but you worry too much and I'm going to be fine."

We quickly walked over to the town square where the reaping would take place. I immediately ­­­went to the sixteen year old section and stood next to Epi. Everyone around us seemed pretty nervous, only a few people were talking and they were all talking about the same thing. This week a rumor was spreading around the districts that the people of the Capital were starting to grow bored of the Hunger Games, I like to think that they grew a heart, but in all actuality it's probable because after the Katniss/Peeta game, no game since has been even half as entertaining to the capital as that year. So apparently the Gamemakers are desperate to make a great hunger game this year; I feel so bad for this years tributes.

The mayor than began the long drawn out speech the officials give each year about the origin of the Hunger Games, I swear each year it gets longer. I looked out at the crowd during the speech, looking for my mother, since the crowd was huge it took a while, but eventually I found her standing towards the back looking really nervous. This made me really glad I only had one good friend and didn't have to worry about anyone else.

Eventually the mayor finished his speech and gave the microphone to Effie, last year she worked with district five, but she came back to us this year because apparently she missed the kids of district 12, we were all shocked. She sounded a little less perky and obnoxious this year, while she rambled on about the honors of winning the game. "Now, it's time to pick are girl tribute," she shouted. Everyone went silent, waiting to hear the name of the girl who we would probably never see again.

"And our girl tribute is… Kara Malone… I was shocked, but of course it's me, of course I'm the one chosen. After I thanked my mom in my head for training me, and squeezed Epi's hand I walked on stage, hopefully I looked defiant as walked over towards the mayor. Pity was filled in everyone's eyes as I walked on stage, none of them seemed to think I had a chance. But I hope I have a chance, I'm not stupid I know it's not a big chance, but still a small chance.

Next Effie reached into the ball for the boy's name, I really couldn't have cared less who was drawn, it didn't matter to me at all. But of course with my luck his name was drawn, Zebulon Pike, even in my head I said his name with venom.

Now being me, I don't have many enemies, and don't do anything to warrant getting enemies, but Zebulon Pike was my one and only enemy.

When he walked on stage he leered at my looking like he was about to laugh sarcastically. Now I am not over exaggerating when I say I'm pretty sure he's been waiting to kill me. He's 18, and is a good foot bigger than me. Most people (except his herd of friends) hate him, but none of them hate him as much as me, and he hates me more than anybody else. It started out when his father died; my father was the head of one of the shifts in the mine that Zebulon's dad worked in. One day the mine where my dad's shift was working collapsed, killing everyone except my dad who by a stroke of luck happened to not be in the mine at that second, died. Zebulon was eight at the time and for some reason or another he decided that it was my father's fault that his father died, and because he was so young he couldn't successfully take the death of his father out on my father (and my father died two years later), so he took it out on me and immediately started to make my life miserable. I was pretty lucky my mom was training my for the hunger games, because then I could at least defend myself against his attacks, but it didn't always go so well.

"Shake hands" the mayor muttered knowing perfectly well that we hated each other. Zebulon griped my hand hard grinning viciously at me and murmuring "oh, this, is going to be fun," which only proved my point that he has been waiting to kill me. Apparently he has finally got his chance. I glared back at him as angrily as I could, but I could never look as vicious as he looked, which normally I would of considered a good thing, but not today.

"And may the odds be ever in your favor" Effie shouted. Huh funny, I thought considering how terribly unlucky my odds have been today.

Well this is the first two chapters, I should add in the next chapter soon. I was wondering If anyone could give some suggestions for names, as you can see the names I chose are terrible


	2. Chapter 2

_So here's the next chapter, thanks for the reviews but I would love some more._

Chapter 2

During the allotted time allowed for family and friends to visit my mother spent most of her time crying while giving me advice, and telling my how proud of me she is. I tried to hold back tears, I had managed to thus far, but this was too much and I started bawling. "Oh Mom, I'm so sorry," I moaned

"No sweetheart, it's not your fault, and anyways it's going to be alright, your going to come home," for once she was the one reassuring me and not the other way around. "You can do this," she continued "I trained you well, no not well great, you are strong and smart, and you can and will do great. I only wish my sister had known all that you do when she was chosen." I was slightly shocked when she said this, in my lifetime I can probably count on one hand how many times my mother had mentioned her sister's name to me.

"Oh mom," I said while starting to cry harder. Of course at that moment the peacekeepers arrived, and started ushering my mom out of the room. "Mom," I shouted after her "I love you, thank you for everything,"

"I love you to Kara, but I'll see you soon," she replied as if she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince me. When the door shut behind her the realization hit that that was probably the last time I would ever see my mom, and a new wave of tears hit me. Next Epi entered the room sobbing, "Oh Kara, I'm so sorry, this never should have happened,"

"I know Epi, I know" I replied "but listen, thank you so much for being such a great friend,"

"Kara, I'm going to miss you so much if you don't return, but your mom's been training you right? You still have a chance, you could win this."

"I'll do my best Epi, and I'll bring you back a present" I said brushing away my tears and putting on a fake air of bravado.

"I'll be expecting a great one from the next hunger games winner" she said with a faint smile playing on her lips.

"Kay" I replied while the Peacekeepers started to pull her out of the room.

"Good luck," she shouted back to me.

"Thanks," I said, but I doubted that she could hear me.

No one else came to see me, so the Peacekeepers lead me to a lush room for the night. The room was a gold similar to my dress, but by now the dress was ruined, not that I cared anymore about it; the dress was stained with my mother's, Epi's and my tears.

Curious about the other unlucky souls chosen as tributes I watched the TV playing in my room showing the other districts reapings. As usual the tributes from districts one, two and four were monsters. Each one was enormous and vicious looking, while I watched their reapings I tried to figure out why they would possibly want to volunteer for this. In the end I decided they must be crazy, why anyone would want to choose to be a hunger games tribute for a career is beyond me.

Everyone else chosen looked like normal, petrified kids. The only ones who seemed like they might stand a chance were both tributes from district six; they were both tall and tough looking. I'm not completely sure why, but the girl from district eight stood out to me, she seemed smart enough to stay alive. The boy from district ten was really tall, which is always an advantage in the games, so he probably stands a chance too. Thankfully this year there were no twelve year olds chosen, although there were a few thirteen year old kids.

I slept horribly that with nightmares of Zebulon and the career tributes killing me sadistically. When I finally decided to give up on sleeping, I was allowed to get on the train. The train was huge and luxurious, with golden chandeliers on the ceiling and plush red chairs. My jaw dropped as I entered the dining room, there piles of food lay on the table calling out my name, each dish would have cost a fortune in district 12. I decided then that I would never be able to live with myself if I didn't try a bit of all of them so I began eating. While I devoured the food Effie, Katniss, and Peeta walked in, all with a hint of a smile on their face while they watched me eat. Zebulon walked in next, he smirked when he saw me, and the smirk remained pasted on his face for the rest of breakfast.

After Zebulon and I had scarfed down a good portion of the food on the table, Peeta and Katniss looked both of us over. Peeta smiled slightly at Zebulon, he must have thought that Zebulon stood a chance, while Katniss on the other hand looked a little sad as she looked at me. I considered glaring at her but decided that that probably wasn't the best idea. But it was kind of hypocritical of her to look at me with pity, considering that before the scoring when she was in the games no one thought she stood a chance either.

"Well," Katniss said still looking a little sad, "shall we train you separately or together."'

"Separately," both Zebulon and I said at the same time, Zebulon then turned to glare at me, as if it was my fault that she had even suggested it.

"Hmm, ok," Peeta said "can you tell us anything about any of your talents, or advantages you have for the games?"

"Not with her here" Zebulon replied still glaring at me. "It wouldn't be fair for me for her to learn all my secret talents, while she has none for me to learn." He continued arrogantly.

"Excuse me," I growled, looking as venomous as I could.

"Alright," Katniss said stopping us there, "we can see the two of you hate each other, so will adjust are plans accordingly. Now Kara I would love to talk to you in the sitting room."

"So," she said when we reached the sitting room, "you want to explain why the two of you hate each other." Quickly I rushed through the story about our hatred for each other, and why I assumed he had been waiting to kill me. "Hmm, that's interesting," she replied. "I've never trained tributes who detest each other before." I nodded in agreement; last year the kids chosen for district 12 were brother and sister.

"Look, I have some skills," I said, changing the subject. She looked at me doubtingly, so then I had to explain to her how and why my mom had been training me for the hunger games.

"Huh, well that's useful," she replied to my story. "What can you do?"

"Well I'm good with swords and knifes, and not to bad with spears. And, I know basic survival skills." She thought about it for a few seconds and then said "show me."

"What?" I said surprised, while out no where she brought out a few weapons: one bow and arrows, three knives, one sword, and one spear. "Show me," Katniss repeated.

I felt like I was back at one of my mom's training sessions. Between me demonstrating my skills at throwing knifes and spears, and having sword fights with her she asked me about toxic berries, getting food, and other basic survival questions. She seemed impressed with just about everything, but she pursed her lips while watching my abysmal attempts with the bow and arrow. She was kind enough not to mention how awful I was, and moved on to a new weapon. After about two hours of this she told me to sit down while she went and got us something to drink. She brought me back a drink full of different types of fruits mashed together, "it's a smoothie" she said while placing it in front of me. It tasted delicious; inside the drink were flavors of fruits that I hadn't tasted since my father died.

After about fifteen minutes of her gazing out in the distance while thinking, and me just sitting there awkwardly she exclaimed "oh I know!"

"You" she continued, "are going to pretend to everyone, including the gamemakers, other tributes, Zebulon, and Peeta that you can't do anything. Which means that you can't score over a four in the private sessions." She stared at me proudly and then continued "this wouldn't work for must people but you look so small, harmless so it should work." She continued smileing at me, looking pleased with herself, and as if I should pleased that she came up with that idea. Well I wasn't.

When she saw the expression on my face, of disbelief and horror, she said sternly "don't look at me like that, it's the perfect idea for you and might keep you alive. Do not let your pride over wanting to have a higher score than Zebulon, make you do something stupid." She had caught me, that was exactly why I didn't like the idea. I'm not sure if I can take anymore of Zebulon's snide comments about me being weak, and I wanted to see that smirk wiped off his face when he saw how much higher my score was than his. Also, if I followed Katniss's plan he would brag about how much higher his score was than mine every second he could. But it seemed that Katniss didn't care what I wanted, and yeah it seemed like a good plan and all, but I don't know how much more I can take of people looking at me like I'm weak.

"Fine" I replied "but I'm not going to like it" I said in a childish tone.

"You're not going to like any part of the hunger games," she replied in a teacher like voice. "I'm just trying to keep you alive Kara," and with that she walked out of the room reminding me not to tell anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Oh sweetheart just wait, you are going to look so gorgeous" one of the members of my team of stylists shrieked. The rest of the stylists grinned at me and continued to animatedly ask me pointless silly questions. I decided though that I should probably use the time to practice for my interview later that week so I answered each question as charmingly as I could. They seemed pleased with my answer, which was encouraging; maybe my actual interview won't go to bad.

"Soooo," the woman with highlighter yellow hair asked me "what's your favorite thing you've seen so far at the capital." I almost laughed at this, if she seemed smarter I would of thought that she really was trying to help me practice. I hadn't seen any of the capital, because the second I got off the train Katniss had brought me to see my stylists, but they didn't seem to realize that so I just made something up.

"Oh definitely the people I've seen, their outfits and styles are stunning" I lied; I had only really seen them and they all looked ridiculous, with freaky hair colors, way to much makeup, and bizarre clothing. All in all their appearance kind of made me afraid of what they were going to do to me, although Katniss had spoken really highly of the head stylist Cinna I still worried.

When they eventually finished with me I was really clean and shiny. Old scars that I had gotten were almost invisible and they told me that they had highlighted my hair. My blond hair still looked pretty much the same as before, but at least they hadn't turned my hair blue. After telling me how "fabulous" I was going to look, they left the room.

A few minutes later a man entered who I assumed was Cinna. "Hello Kara," he said. His hair was a normal brown, which helped reassure me that he was saner than the rest of the stylist team. He looked at me for a few seconds before saying "hmm well Katniss is right you've got the whole helpless and harmless thing going for you."

I nodded at him, I guess I'm just going to have to except the whole looking harmless thing, he at least wasn't looking at me pityingly though; that was a nice change. He then sat down on a nearby couch and motioned for me to join him.

"So tell me about yourself Kara, what has your life been like?"

I was surprised, I wasn't expecting him to ask or care about my life. Known of the members of the rest of my stylist team ever asked me about my past, it was just about the present. He really seemed to care though, and was surprisingly easy to talk to. In what felt like a matter of minutes, I had told him basically my whole life story. I told him about my father's death, my mother, Epi, and the whole thing with Zebulon. It was nice to really talk to someone; it made me realize how lonely I had been over the last two days. I couldn't really talk to Katniss or Peeta because they were always busy planning things or thinking about strategies. I've tried talking to Effie a few times, but after a couple of minutes I was usually to irritated with her to keep talking, and there was no way I could ever talk to Zebulon. So that didn't leave many options left.

"Why did you become a stylist for tributes?" I asked him once he was done asking questions about my life.

"Oh, well I was just always interested in designing clothes." I don't know if it was just me, but I felt that there was more to this story than he was letting on, when I tried to press him further about it though, he remained aloof, and quickly changed the subject.

"Well you must see your dress now," he said clapping his hands together then getting up to go get the dress.

The dress he came back was really sparkly, after I stared at it for a second I realized that it looked like a diamond.

"Now I know district twelve doesn't really produce diamonds, but your district mines coal so that's close enough." It really did look like a diamond, even though I hadn't seen many diamonds before. The dress was a little grayer than a normal diamond, and somehow Cinna made the dress out of a fabric that had the same type of luster as a diamond. The dress sparkled but not enough to hurt your eyes, and your eyes were immediately drawn to it.

"Oh Cinna, it's gorgeous," I gushed.

"Thank you Kara I'm glad you like it." He replied smiling. "Go try it on and then the other stylists will do your makeup.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^There's absolutely no reason for me to be nervous, I repeated in my mind while Zebulon and I were being loaded into our chariot. He was silent the whole ride over, for once he didn't make any irritating comments, he only smirked. He was dressed all in black, and like me was sparkly. I nearly laughed when I saw this; a sparkly outfit does not fit his personality.

Unfortunately once we reached the site of the ceremony we still had to wait a good fifteen minutes before we could walk down to the stage, and end the parade of tributes. When it was finally our turn Zebulon got up at the same time as I did. I was faster though and got to get out of the chariot first.

I should have expected it really; it was stupid of me not to. Of course he would take this chance to make a fool of me, of course he would.

To any member of the audience it would have looked like Zebulon had tripped and caught himself by grabbing onto my shoulders. Instead though he pretended to trip and then pushed me out of the chariot, making me land flat on my face on the ground.

How could he, I thought to myself cursing him in my head. He had even planned it out perfectly too, no one saw what he had really done so he wouldn't get in trouble with the Gamemakers, and I can't retaliate back without getting myself in trouble.

I had staid there for a few second slowly convincing myself that kicking Zebulon would only do me harm. But my time was cut short by a hand reaching out to help me. Thinking it was Zebulon trying to knock me down again I ignored the hand and got up by myself.

I turned to glare at Zebulon, only to find that it wasn't him. Instead, I was glaring at a different boy tribute. Vaguely I remembered that he was from district ten.

"Sorry," the tribute muttered, and walked back to where the girl tribute from district ten was. I felt a little bad, he was just trying to help, so I was about to call out to him to apologize when I was interrupted by the devil himself, Zebulon

"You should be more careful Kara," Zebulon had the nerve to say. Grinning he continued sarcastically "look what you did to your pretty dress."

Oh I was mad, but to keep myself from screaming at him or doing something worse, which I was strongly considering, I looked down at my dress. With my luck, I had managed to fall out onto one of the few areas that were not covered in carpet. So as a result I had landed in dirt, which of course ended up getting all over my dress.

Shaking with fury I whispered "How dare you."

"I don't know what you could possibly be talking about Kara," he said still smiling. "Now we should probably go, you're holding everything up."

Sure enough all the tributes and President Snow were on stage glaring at me for making them wait, as if it was my fault I fell. I started walking quickly towards the stage, walking as far away from Zebulon as possible. Some people in the crowd giggled while I walked by, but most still cheered for me. I think I managed to hold in my anger pretty well, and still managed to smile and wave to the crowd. To be honest if I hadn't been so mad, I might have almost had fun. The crowd seemed so excited to see us, although I guess it was just because they were excited to watch us fight to the death.

We reached the stage a minute or so later, and the ceremony began. During the ceremony the stupid cameraman zoomed in on the dirt on my dress, so the dirt was displayed on the giant TV screen beside me. I had to strain to keep a smile on my face at this, it helped that my dress still looked gorgeous.

After the ceremony I was driven to a skyscraper of a building. Once there a capital worker led me to an elevator, I was kind of excited; I had never been on an elevator before. Very few buildings in my district had one and I never had any reason to go into any of those buildings. When I got on, the capital worker pushed the number fifty and we were off. It was terrifying, and I immediately forgot how excited I was to be on an elevator. The elevator must have been faster than the train that had brought me to the capital, and I held on to the handrail for dear life. It didn't help that the elevator was completely made of glass so when I looked down it seemed like I was falling. When the elevator finally skidded to a halt I stumbled out, the capital worker was probably holding in laughter, but I didn't really care, the quicker I got out of that death trap the better.

I was still shaking while the capital worker led me to the room. I walked over to the couch, and sat down, and made the mistake of thinking. The elevator only reminded me of why I was here; to fight twenty three other kids to the death, probably dying in the process.

At least I wasn't crying about it anymore though, maybe I'm finally starting to come to terms with my almost inevitable death.


	4. Chapter 4

**Here's the next chapter. Thank you so much to hungergamesfan51 for constantly reviewing. I only got one review for my last chapter though which isn't encouraging, so please, please people review, even if you hate the story. Also after this chapter I've decided to change Zebulon's name to something else, because I really hate it so I would love some ideas. Thanks**

I woke up to someone pounding on my door. I strongly considered not answering it, but it could only be Katniss, and it's probably not a good idea to make her mad, so I answered the door anyways. On my way to the door I glanced at the clock, green letters flashed 6:03 AM.

"Took you long enough" Katniss muttered as she barged into my room.

"You couldn't wait an hour?" I asked with obvious annoyance in my voice.

"Again I am just trying to keep you alive"

"Oh, how kind of you," I retorted. She scowled at me and handed me a knife.

"You need to practice now Kara; today at training you're not going to learn anything. Remember, when you enter the training room, you have never picked up a weapon before, so act like it with the instructors, so will have to train now."

And with that we trained for two hours. She actually did teach me a lot and all in all it wasn't a bad two hours. We had to finish at eight though for breakfast.

After breakfast Zebulon and I went to our first training session. He immediately made his way over to the swords while I surveyed the room. There was no point in even heading over to an actual weapon, since I would have to pretend that I couldn't use it, and I'm not a good actress, so I decide to head over to edible and poisonous plants section. After that I went to the knots section. The trainer showed me how to do a particularly hard knot, and then I attempted to copy it. I struggled with the knot, and after five minutes I completely forgot what to do next.

"Put the left end through the loop," a low voice told me. Strange, I thought, what other tribute would want to help me, it would make more since for him to be lying to me.

"I'm pretty sure it's the right end," I replied not looking up. I tried it, and to my astonishment the knot immediately unraveled.

"Told you" said the person chuckling slightly. Surprised that he hadn't lied to me, I looked up at the person to find that it was the tribute from district ten.

"Oh, it's you," I was stunned that he was even talking at me after I had been so rude to him when he tried to help me yesterday. "I'm sorry," I blurted out while still looking up at him. He was tall, and good looking, with dark brown hair and bright green eyes.

"For not listening to me, or for glaring at me when I tried to help you yesterday?" he asked still smiling.

"I suppose both, but mainly for glaring at you yesterday, I had thought you were someone else."

"Oh good, it's probably best for me not to have an enemy before the games start," he said calmly.

"Probably," I agreed looking over at Zebulon who was spearing a dummy.

"I'm Jarek," he said curiously watching me stare over at Zebulon.

"Kara," I replied, and then got up. "Well I'll see you around"

"Alright" he said turning and walking over to the archery area. That was really strange I thought to myself while heading over to the camouflage section. Except for the careers, all the other tributes avoided the rest of the tributes as if they have some kind of deadly disease. But I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to see Jarek again anytime soon.

It was lunch time and I was sitting at a round table in the corner of the room watching the other tributes. The tributes from the first, second, and fourth districts sat at the table in the center of the room and were laughing loudly. What was interesting was that when Zebulon entered the room he walked right up to them an asked to join them. They looked at him for a few seconds then one of the girls said "sure, why not." It didn't surprise me that he would try to join a career alliance, but I was shocked that they accepted him to their table. I guess he did look vicious and strong, but he was from district twelve, so I was surprised that they didn't laugh at his request. All the other tributes were sitting alone staring sadly down at their food.

When Jarek entered the room he walked right over to my table smiling and carrying a plate of food.

"What?" he said looking at the shocked expression on my face. "Do you really want to spend what might be the last week of your life sitting alone at lunch, staring at other tributes?" He said laughing. He had a good point, but there was no reason for me to get to know someone that I might have to kill. "Do you want me to go?" He asked raising both of his eyebrows.

"You can stay," I said, this probably wasn't a good idea, but this at least he wouldn't bother any of the other scared looking tributes by asking them if he could sit with them.

"So, what would you like to talk about?" he asked politely.

"You could tell me about your family," I suggested.

"Okay." Like Cinna he, was pleasant to talk to. He told me about his two sisters and his brother. He briefly mentioned his father, but made it sound like he wasn't a big part of his life. He spoke adoringly of his siblings who were all several years younger than him. We then moved on to my family, but since I only had my mother that didn't take long, and then we started talking about our districts.

"See that wasn't so bad, aren't you glad you let me sit down?" Jarek asked grinning after lunch was over.

"I'll admit, I had fun," I replied laughingly, "see you later."

"Bye," he said and we both went to different stations.

The next day I went to archery, the last station I hadn't been to that I wouldn't have to pretend to be bad at. After about five minutes of struggling to hit the target, Jarek came over to the station.

"Are you even trying to aim," he asked while the arrow I shot ran into the wall a good five feet to the left of the target. I turned and scowled at him while reloading another arrow into the bow. This time the arrow hit the edge of the target.

"Ha," I said to him "you try."

"Alright," he said taking my bow and aimed at the target. The arrow hit the target dead center. "I'm sorry, what were you saying" he said smiling at me.

"Oh give me that," I said taking the bow from his hands and trying again.

"You're not holding the bow straight," he said and for the next hour he tried to teach me to use bow. By the end of the hour, I had managed to hit the center of the target twice. That's probably good enough I decided, and moved over to the sword station, with Jarek following behind me.

"Are you going to keep following me for the rest of the day?" I asked him.

"Probably, it seems like you could use the help,"

"I'm doing just fine thank you," I replied, but he ignored that and followed me around to the other stations for the rest of that day and the next.

The night before the final training session I couldn't sleep. After pacing my room for about an hour I started walking down the hallway and ended up sitting in a chair in front of the terrifying glass elevator.

I felt kind of homesick while staring at the elevator. As much as I tried to avoid thinking about her, I kept thinking of my mother and what she must have done today. Since it was Thursday she would have gotten off work early, and would have probably gone shopping for food. Epi would have just gone to school today, and I bet she was learning about the rebellion this week, since we always learned about the rebellion the week before the Hunger Games. I really shouldn't have been thinking about them though I decided, it will only make things worse.

I was brought out of my trance by a knocking sound. Grinning in the glass elevator stood Jarek, waiting for the doors to open.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"That's beside the point, what are you doing here?"

"Well, I couldn't sleep either, and I was bored so I decided ride the elevator, because it's really fun. On my last trip I saw you sitting here so I decided to stop on your floor."

"So to try and fall asleep you go on the elevator" I replied sarcastically.

"Well not necessarily to fall in sleep, just to find something to do. You would be surprised to find how many other people are up at one o'clock in the morning. Would you like to join me, or do you want to continue to sit there staring off into space."

"Go on the elevator?" I said trying to keep a horrified look off my face but failing.

"You're scared of the elevator," he said laughing. "You're about to enter the Hunger Games and you're scared of an elevator."

"I highly doubt that there will be any elevators in the Hunger Games."

He just laughed harder at this and said "come on, you should get over irrational fears."

"Fine, I'm coming," he grinned at this and held the elevator door open.

"Let's go to the top floor" Jarek said.

"Fine," I held on tightly to the elevator's handles and we were off. It only took about ten seconds to travel the twenty floors to the top, I closed my eyes the entire time so it wasn't to bad.

"That wasn't awful now was it," Jarek said when we reached the top. "Although you did close your eyes, but still progress."

"I ignored this and walked out of the elevator. There was a stair case a little beyond the elevator. I walked up the stairs with Jarek and we ended up on the roof.

"Oh the elevator was definitely worth it Kara, look at this view," he said. The view really was magnificent and showed all of the capital.

"Are you nervous?" I murmured after a few minutes of silence.

"For the games no, there's nothing I can do about it. But I am scared, have you heard about the rumors for this year's games?"

"That they have to do something big to keep the capital from getting bored, yeah. What drastic thing do you think the capital is going to do to us to get the games to be more interesting?"

"I'm not sure, but I was thinking that they might try a new type of arena. They usually always do some type of forest, maybe their going to change that."

"That's a possibility, but it wouldn't be enough."

"No, your right it wouldn't be."

"Its scary to think about."

"I know." We were silent after that, and just stared off into the distance, trying not to think about what the capital was going to do to us. After about ten minutes the silence was broken by a door opening. I half expected it to be a capital worker coming to tell us that we shouldn't be on the roof, and I guess I was kind of right.

"Kara shouldn't you be asleep, there is judging tomorrow" Katniss growled as she and Peeta walked over at us. Both she and Peeta looked furious.

To appease Katniss I decided to go, and told her "yeah your right I'll go," I had never seen her this mad, but I guess I hadn't really known her for a long time though.

"I'll see you in the morning Kara," Katniss threatened as I started to walk towards the stairs.

"Okay, by Jarek," I said kind of defiantly, which only irritated Katniss more. I was going to have a fun training session with her in the morning.


	5. Chapter 5

**So I know I said that I would find a new name for Zebulon, but that didn't go very well, so I decided just to shorten his name down to Zeb for the time being, because it's shorter.**

**Thanks to Hungergamesfan51 for reviewing and ****x-FruitySkittles-x for favoriting****!**

"What the hell do you think your doing Kara?" Katniss said for what must have been the fifth time.

"I think you're overreacting," I replied calmly.

"Overreacting! You think I've enjoyed watching my last five tributes die! And you, if you're not careful you're not going to be any different from the rest."

"Aren't you being hypocritical," I said getting angry at this.

"If you're talking about Rue then no, no I'm not, that ended up going horribly wrong. I still have nightmares about that day. And if you're talking about Peeta the odds of that working out were one in a million. And don't you dare mention love because if-"

"I never once mentioned love," I said rolling my **eyes.**

"Good because then you're automatically going to get stabbed in the back. I only trusted Peeta after he had saved my life and when I knew that we could both survive."

"Katniss, I-" I wasn't even sure what I was going to say to her, but it didn't matter because she cut me off anyways.

"I don't want to hear it Kara, you end this thing off now, or suffer later." She said then stormed out of my room. Apparently there isn't going to be a morning training session today I thought before going back to sleep. She was still overreacting anyways, it's not like I trust him, and I don't care what excuse she gives, she's still being hypocritical.

I woke up forty-five minutes later and headed down to breakfast, I was the only one there for about ten minutes and then Zeb entered the room.

"Well, I'm pretty sure that no one in the history of the Hunger Games has ever gotten a zero as a training score," he said sneeringly "but you could be the first one." I glared at him, and he continued "don't worry though; no one expects you to do well."

"Yes, because you really think people expect anything of you Zeb. Even with Katniss and Peeta winning five years ago, no one expects anything from the District 12 tributes; you're not going to get any sponsors."

"I don't know if you'll ever have the chance to see me prove you wrong, but I will." He said and that was the end of our conversation until Katniss and Peeta entered the room ten minutes later. They both still looked pretty mad, and Katniss didn't look at me all through breakfast.

"What did you do?" Zeb said sneeringly while Katniss and Peeta were talking to themselves.

"Nothing and it's none of your business," I grumbled. He smirked at this and then helped himself to more orange juice.

"Kara, I want to talk to you before you leave for your training session." Katniss said, daring me to refuse.

When we had left the room she turned to me and said "remember you're aiming for a four."

"I know," I replied. She was still to mad to say anything else, so she went back inside after that, while I went to the training room.

When Zeb and I entered the training room, Jarek wasn't there but everyone else seemed to be. Zeb headed over to the careers the second he walked in. They seemed to have accepted him pretty well, for careers anyways, into their group. I sat down as far away from him I could and decided on what I was going to do to get a four. I could show them my mediocre archery skills, my good edible plants skills, and pretend to be terrible at throwing knifes. Jarek entered the room after I had decided this and walked over to me.

"Am I allowed to sit by you?" Jarek asked smirking.

"No, but sit down anyways," I told him. Katniss was being overcautious, I would be careful.

Smiling he said "I thought Katniss was going to kill me yesterday."

"She was probably considering it," I said matter-of-factly.

"Did she yell at you?"

"Yeah, she did"

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "Maybe I should lea-"

"I told you to sit down," I said nearly rolling my eyes.

"Okay," he said kind of uncertainly.

We were pretty quite after that, and watched the room slowly empty. "Good luck," he said when it was his turn.

"You too," I said, and he smiled and left. Soon it was just Zeb and I sitting there. For once instead of looking arrogant he looked kind of nervous, it was refreshing**.** When, I was called in; the gamemakers all looked kind of excited, as if they were pleased with this year's tributes. There faces kind of dropped when they saw me though, it would have pleased Katniss.

I started off with archery. I shot about fifteen arrows, most all of them ended up hitting some part of the target, which was better than I was expecting. Next I decreased my edible plant skills, and ended up picking up three berries that would have killed me in the arena. Then I picked up a few knifes and headed over to the dummies.

Very few of the knives I threw were able to stick on the dummies, and if they did they hit the dummy's shoulder. All and all it was a pretty horrible attempt with knifes and I was kind of afraid I had overdone it. I flew one last knife and made it stick near the heart, so they would at least give me a two.

"You may go now" said one of the gamemakers unsympathetically.

"Thank you," I said, almost sarcastically and left.

"How did it go Kara," Katniss said when I reached our floor.

"Well, you'd be pleased with it," I said trying to walk past her.

"Good, thanks Kara." She said not letting me pass. "I'm sorry for yelling at you this morning, but I just want you to succeed," and as an afterthought she added "and not die."

"Thanks Katniss," I said kind of shocked, Katniss does not strike me as the type of person who apologizes often.

"It's just that making friends with other tributes is one of the worse things you can do in the arena, it always ends up being bad for them and worse for you." After that she turned back into her normal unapologetic self. "Now, we should probably train before dinner, since we didn't get to this morning."

At dinner that night everyone was silent for once, waiting for seven o'clock when the scores would be broadcasted. The time eventually came though, and the scores were in general pretty high. The careers either got nine or tens, while the rest of the tributes got somewhere around a six. When district ten's scores came up the girl tribute got a five, and Jarek got a twelve. I was shocked at Jarek's score, and even felt a little betrayed. Even careers don't get twelve's, and they spent their whole lives training for this. What kind of person could get a twelve? Certainly not a trustworthy person.

"What!" Zeb screamed at this. "Who the hell is this guy, no one has ever gotten a twelve before." Zeb's face was bright red and furious. "How could this happen?" he said to Peeta, as if it was somehow his fault.

Peeta shrugged his shoulders, "I have no idea, what he could have possibly done to get a twelve. I thought it was impossible to get."

"And you," Zeb said turning on me. "You sat with him today, and are usually with him, what do you know about him."

"Nothing," I hissed. "Now be quiet you're going to miss your own score."

"You did what Kara," Katniss screeched at this but she was quickly shushed by everyone else, since Zeb's score was about to come on. Zeb score was a ten, but Jarek's score of twelve overshadowed his joy, and kept him from gloating too much about it. I could have thanked Jarek for this, but I doubted I would ever talk to him again. Katniss was right Jarek was not someone to trust. And I had definitely been starting to trust him or I wouldn't be feeling so betrayed right now. Uh, I was wrong I thought, I hated to be wrong, and Katniss was completely right, it was really dangerous of me to make friends with someone so lethal and who I had no reason to trust.

I scored a five, which was pretty lenient of the gamemakers; I probably should have gotten a three. Katniss seemed pretty happy with my score, even though it was a little higher than she wanted, she nearly smiled when she saw it, but I guess she was to mad at me for sitting with Jarek to smile.

"Kara," she said after my score had left the screen. "Let's go out to the hallway," she growled. She then grabbed my arm, and pulled me out into the hallway.

Once door closed I turned to her. "Katniss, I learned my lesson, you were completely right, I never should have talked to him, and I'm so sorry," I said to her quietly.

"Kara, don't apologize to me, this can only hurt you. I-" Katniss stopped for a few seconds, and then continued. "I don't even know what to say to you, Kara, I've said it all before. Just remember you have no reason to ever trust him, he wants to win, and that can only happen if you die."

And with that she left leaving me alone in the hallway. After a few minutes of feeling pretty guilty, I walked to my room and went to sleep. Tomorrow will be a long and boring day preparing for interviews.

………….

After hours of practicing, I was finally deemed ready for the interviews. First I worked with Effie, and then Peeta. "Oh, thank goodness you have me and Peeta to train you." Effie said, when I asked her why Katniss wasn't training me. "Katniss," she continued "is just horrible with interviews." According to Effie and Peeta, I was supposed to play "sweet and charming." I wasn't feeling very sweet or charming today though, but they didn't seem to care.

…….

"So Jarek," Caesar said. "There must be a girl back home waiting for you?" The capital must really be desperate for another Katniss/Peeta year I thought, this had been the eighth time that Caesar had asked some sort of variation of that question.

"Only my sisters," Jarek said laughing. He had been playing likable, and it had been working out well for him.

"If you say so, Jarek," said Caesar doubtingly. "So, did you know that you are the only tribute ever to get a twelve? How does that feel?"

"Well Caesar, its nice and all, but I don't think high scores mean anything about how well your going to do in the games, so I don't think about that much."

"How humble of you, well thank for talking with me today, and good luck in the games." On his way back to his seat Jarek tried to catch my eye, for what must have been the fourth time. I ignored him though and stared intently at the stage, not meeting his gaze, and repeating to myself that I have no reason to trust him.

My interview went pretty well, according to Effie, who I talked to after the interview, I answered all of Caesars questions "very charmingly," but I "smiled too much." Zeb of course, played vicious and menacing in his interview, answering all of his questions with as few words as possible.

"So Zeb, your district has been pretty famous since the games five years ago with Katniss and Peeta. Is there any chance of another romance this year with you and Kara?" I almost laughed at this, there was no way that Zeb and I would ever, ever be the next Katniss and Peeta. Even Katniss nearly laughed at this question, I could see her sitting in the second row of the audience next to Peeta and Cinna.

"Kara, wishes," Zeb said arrogantly. Jerk, I thought while Peeta and Katniss chuckled quietly at this. Caesar on the other hand just looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Well, thank you very much Zeb, and everyone remember to tune in tomorrow for the first day of the Hunger Games."

………

"Kara," Jarek said as I was heading over to the chariot that would take me home after the interview . "I-"

"Jarek," I said cutting him off, "I don't think this is a good idea." I said stiffly

"You're probably right," he sighed, "good luck Kara." He said as I stepped into my chariot.

"Same to you," I said coolly.

Unsurprisingly I got very little sleep that night, and it didn't help that Katniss insisted on keeping me up half the night telling me about what I should do. "Find water immediately, get out of the Cornucopia as fast as you can, sleep in trees," were just some of the hours of advice she gave to me. When I suggested that getting some sleep tonight would help me tomorrow, she just glared at me and said "you weren't going to be able to fall asleep anyways, so we might as well use this time to our advantage." After the first two hours though I started to wonder if she was just doing this so I wouldn't go see Jarek.

………

"Are you ready Kara," Cinna asked me while I was waiting to be brought up to the arena.

"I think so," I said quietly, "there's nothing I can do if I'm not though."

"True," Cinna said seriously.

"I think you have a good chance of winning Kara," Cinna told me. "Just be cautious and careful, okay."

"I'll do my best, thanks for everything Cinna," I said.

"I hardly did anything, Kara," he said smiling. A capital worker came in then and told me it was time to go. The worker led me to a gold cylinder, and told me that it would lift me into the arena. When the cylinder started moving, Cinna yelled good luck, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

On the ride up I remembered my fears of what arena they were going to throw me into. I hoped it wasn't a tundra or desert, a forest would be best, but I doubted that they would do that again. When the cylinder had risen to ground level I could see that the arena was full of structures that might have once resembled buildings. Trees and other plants grew over the stones though, adding to the ancient ruins look.

Needless to say it was not what I was expecting. "Oh," I said to myself shocked when I had finally figured out where I was, I felt kind of stupid that it took me so long it out, but in my defense, I was pretty sure that the remnants of the toxic bombs would have made the place unable to be an arena. But I guess the capital had fixed up District 13 enough to let us kill each other in it. It seemed like a good arena to fight in though, lots of places to hide and there were still trees. The cylinder had reached ground level now, and I could that all the other tributes, were like me, staring in wonder at the arena.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Claudius Templesmith voiced boomed. I jumped, nearly falling off the cylinder onto the mines below. Idiot, I thought to myself, you already almost killed yourself. "I'm very excited to tell you about a new rule for this year's games. If the final tributes are willing, we will allow the last two tributes alive from any district to win. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor."

Really, I thought to myself, that's uncreative of the capital. Almost identical rules as the games five years ago, I guess though they thought that if it worked then it might as well work now. And with this rule you can always turn on people you promised to win with, so I guess they will probably gain back some more interest in the Hunger Games, but still they could have done something a little more different.

We were in a circle around what had probably once been the main square of district thirteen; each tribute was looking at the others, looking for potential partners. Zeb was two people down from me and leered at me when I caught his gaze. Jarek was across from me, and was staring at the Cornucopia looking at the weapons on the ground. He smiled at me when he saw me looking at him. The gong rings, announcing the start of the killings.

**So how was this chapter? I think my ending sentence is very mediocre, but I couldn't think of anything else. Please, please review and tell me what you think.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Thanks to hungergamesfan51, gethsemane342, laxxgoal31, and x-FruitySkittles-x for reviewing. Four reviews instead of one! Oh, and thanks also to veggo for favoriting, it was really nice of you. **

Quickly I jump off my cylinder, and grab the nearest item, which happened to be a knife; it was pretty rusty but it would do its job. I ran a few steps nearer to the Cornucopia, grabbing a bright purple backpack. Only a few feet away from the backpack were a set of knives, I almost went to grab them but that seemed like it would be pushing my luck, no one had tried to kill me yet, and I didn't want to end up dying at the Cornucopia because of greed. The bloodbath was only just beginning as I started sprinting down one of the streets that lead away from the square. Unfortunately the beginning of all the streets were clear of trees and houses, and having your back to the Cornucopia for more than a few seconds is never a good idea.

I was lucky that the first person to throw something at me did not have a good aim, and the spear landed harmlessly to the left of me. I turned around to defend myself, only to have Zeb throw a knife at me, I had barely moved out of the way in time. A second later and the knife probably would have landed in my head. I heard him laugh as I barely avoided it. But before he could throw another knife at me, another tribute attempted to stab Zeb in the back. Unfortunately for her he noticed the ill-fated girl and went after her instead. I picked up the knife and kept running. While I continued running I silently thanked the girl for distracting Zeb, maybe she'll even be able to kill him. I shouldn't get my hopes up though; there must have been a reason that he scored a ten.

After twenty minutes of running the cannons started firing. One… two…three…four…five…six. Only six deaths? I thought to myself, the careers didn't do nearly as good as job as they usually do at the Cornucopia. Eighteen tributes left. I wondered if Jarek was one of them, not that it mattered of course, I was just curious. Everyone must have been trying to kill him at the Cornucopia, but he was probably smart enough to get out of there the second the gong rang.

Even with the new rule I didn't think I would align with him, I still had no reason to trust him. Mainly though hanging around with someone who has a twelve seems overly dangerous. But I still kind of wanted an alliance with someone; it would be nice to have someone to keep watch for part of the night, and to help me forage for food and water. And as long as I think I can trust the person, and I don't grow particularly attached to them, I should be fine. Hopefully, or maybe I'm stupid to even consider it.

I had been running for nearly two hours by now and was starting to get tired. I seemed to be nearly out of the village where there was houses to hide in, and was instead in an open field. I stopped running now and looked in the backpack I picked up to see what I had gotten. Inside the bag were a water bottle (empty of course), water purifier, some rope, crackers, dried fruit, and a sleeping bag. Not bad, I thought to myself, but I desperately needed water. I turned back into the town and continued to look for water after that. To keep from being out in the open though, I walked in between the torn down buildings.

Night fell soon and the six people who died at the Cornucopia flashed across the sky, and one other person. They must have died recently I thought to myself, and I just didn't hear their cannon. Zeb's picture wasn't shown but the girl who was fighting him was, poor girl it's a shame she didn't win. I didn't recognize anyone else shown, so Jarek must have survived.

I was starting to get really tired by now, and decided to make camp for the night in one of the houses that was more intact than the others. Trying not to think about the family that had once lived there.

I was careless as I walked into the house, I really should have been paying more intention, but I hadn't seen any other tributes since the Cornucopia, and I was exhausted. I really hadn't expected there to be anyone in this particular house, it was a pretty big arena, but apparently that didn't stop there from being another girl already there. When I walked in she was eating some dried fruit, but stopped at my appearance. She was small and young, must have been about thirteen years old. She looked completely helpless and harmless sitting there, and I knew after seeing her that I couldn't kill her. I know I was trying to play harmless, but she had it down, and I wasn't completely sure why she seemed so harmless either; maybe it was her age or small size. Unlike me, she wasn't pretending to be harmless either. She did grab a knife when she saw me, but she wasn't able to wipe away fast enough a look of uncertainty and what might have been disgust from her face. She was not a killer. I lowered Zeb's knife and started backing away from her.

"Wait," she called when she realized that I didn't plan on killing her, and that I knew she wasn't going to kill me. "My name's Juniper and I'm from District ten." The girl said, meeting my eyes, without a trace of fear in her own.

"Kara, District 12," I said curiously to her. Her lack of fear was surprising; especially from someone who looked so harmless. "Well, see you around Juniper," I said while turning to leave the house.

"Wait Kara," she called out. "Do you want to start an alliance? I might not be the best fighter, but you look exhausted. I can take first watch so you can sleep," she said persuasively. I really did need to sleep, and maybe she had water. She didn't seem like the most useful partner I could have though, but she seemed trustworthy, and anyone to useful, probably wouldn't be that trustworthy.

"Alright," I said, it seemed like she could use my help, next to her sat a pile of berries that were definitely toxic. "You know those berries you have next to you are poisonous," I said pointing to them.

"Are they?" She said looking down at the berries. "Huh, how did I miss that," she said shaking her head. "Well it's a good thing you're here," she said smiling. I'm not sure why, but I got the feeling that she knew that they were poisonous. But, I was too tired to think too much about it.

"You'll take first watch?" I asked while getting out my sleeping bag.

"Of course, see you tomorrow," she said. I hope I didn't make a mistake, I thought to myself before falling asleep. But I guess I'll know if I did if I wake up tomorrow.

Thankfully I woke up to see that Juniper was still there, and I was still alive. A pretty good sign that I made the right decision.

"Oh," she said when she saw me awake, her face lighting up for some reason. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes I did thank you, you know you didn't have to let me sleep for so long." I said, noticing that it was now light outside.

"Oh its fine, you looked really tired. Would you like some water?" She said smiling, while holding up a bottle of water."

"You have water?" I said excitedly. "Where did you get it?"

"I'll show you later, I'm kind of tired now."

"Oh, of course go to sleep. Will you show me where you got it though after you wake up?"

"Of course Kara, wake me up in a few hours."

"Okay," I said before taking a big gulp of water. I was starting to feel pretty glad that I agreed to this alliance.

She woke up a couple hours later, and we went out hunting for food and water. Juniper was pretty chatty the whole trip up talking about her family and life in District 10, Jarek's district, I couldn't help but remember.

"So are you friends with the other tribute from you're district." Juniper asked me after talking about her sisters.

"Zeb!" I said laughing, "no more like enemies. Why do you ask? Are you already trying to trade me in for a different partner?" I said teasingly.

"No," she said laughing slightly, "just trying to make conversation, you know you're kind of quiet."

"Sorry," I said, still smiling. "What do you want to know about me?"

"Well let's start with why you're enemies," she said while we were collecting edible plants.

"Alright," I said and I told her the story, when I finished I asked her if she was friends with Jarek.

"Jarek? No I'm not; in fact I had never talked to him before the reaping. I'm shocked he got a twelve.

"Aren't we all," I said.

While she showed me a creek she had found in the backyard of a house a few blocks away, we talked about our families. By this time we had been out a few hours and had collected more than enough food and water for the next two days. When we got back to camp we divided up the food evenly between us, and went through the supplies we had. Juniper had another sleeping bag, night vision glasses, a couple knifes, a water bottle, and some food. I was particularly excited about the night vision glasses; I had never seen them before.

"I'll take first watch again," Juniper told me that night.

"You sure? You were first watch last night."

"Oh, its fine, I'm not tired anyways. I'll wake you up later tonight okay."

"Okay, goodnight."

…..

"Kara" shrieked Juniper, a couple of hours later. I jumped up, immediately awake, to see three careers and Zeb surrounding the doorway, and the girl from District 1 holding a knife up to Juniper's throat.

"Can't you make her be quiet," said the male tribute from District 2.

"Of course, I can," said the girl tribute tracing the tip of the knife along the middle of Juniper's neck.

"Go for it," the boy tribute said with a mocking smile. "She's of no use to us."

"No," I yelled jumping up to try and save Juniper. I was to late though; the girl tribute had already shoved her knife through Juniper's heart, and a cannon went off.

"Stand still, or die Kara," Zeb threatened waving his spear towards me, when he saw me go towards Juniper.

"You killed Juniper," I said angrily to the girl tribute. Juniper was a good person, she didn't deserve to die, not like this and not here.

"Yes, yes I did, and I would happily do it again." The girl said smirking. This was too much for me, and I quickly grabbed one of my knifes, which was hidden under a pile of rocks, and threw it at her hitting her in the face. She shrieked clutching her face, while she grabbed one of her other knifes, and threw it at me. Her aim was off though since she had just be hit, and I easily avoided her knife. I was about to throw my other knife at her, when Zeb appeared and calmly grabbed the other knife out of my hand.

"Why didn't you take her weapons," shrieked the girl tribute still clutching her face.

"Didn't think she had any, or could use any for that matter," said Zeb shrugging his shoulders.

"You didn't think," she snapped, turning her knifes from me to Zeb.

"Stop," said the guy tribute from district 1. "We did have a reason to come here."

"I suppose so," said the girl still glaring at Zeb.

"Do you know where the guy from district 10 is?" Said the male tribute from District 1.

"Where's Jarek, Kara?" Zeb added calmly.

"Why would I know," I snarled.

"How bout because you two were always together during training week." Said the girl tribute, still looking like she was considering killing me.

"True," I said "but that means nothing. Why would I want to join an alliance with someone who would only have people like you hunting him down? Or how about why would he want to join with me when I got a five. A five and a twelve are probably not going to make an alliance with each other."

"Zeb," the guy from District 1 said, picking up his spear. "You said she would know where he was." I nearly laughed at this, Zeb must have promised them that he would get them Jarek. It was stupid of him to assume that I'd know where he is.

"Now wait just a second," said Zeb pretty calmly for someone who was probably about to be killed. "How do we know that she's not lying?"

"Cause it makes sense, we would have killed you by now if you hadn't gotten a ten." Said the male tribute from District 1, who I was starting to assume was their leader.

"Ok well she might know something useful about him" Zeb said a little less calmly. "And for all we know, Jarek might come looking for her, which is exactly what we want."

"Do you have any information about him; it just might save your life," the guy from District 1 said menacingly.

"No, I do not," I said smiling at Zeb, pleased to be part of his downfall.

"Well now that she's proved less than useful, can I kill her," said the girl from District 1.

"No," I said calmly at the same time the guy from District 1 said "yes."

"Sorry," she said not sounding sorry at all as she walked towards me. How was I going to get out of this alive? I thought to myself. Zeb had taken my only weapon, and there were five career tributes standing in front of me. The odds were not looking good. My only chance appeared to a small hole towards the back of the house that I had noticed yesterday. I was pretty sure the careers could not fit through it, but how I would ever get there without being speared was the question.

The girl from District 1 was smiling grotesquely, as she walked towards me, sure of an easy kill, just as a knife hit her in the shoulder. Apparently it was my lucky day. She yelled out and turned around, trying to see who had hit her. "Figure out who did that," she yelled at Zeb and two other tributes standing there. The distraction gave me the perfect amount of time to run to the hole that they must have not notice or assumed I couldn't fit through. For people who had gotten such high scores, they sure were stupid. I better be able to fit through the hole though, I thought to myself, it was probably my last chance to survive.

"Hey," the girl tribute said as she saw running towards the hole. "Stop that," she said throwing one of her knifes at me. It slightly cut my arm, but I was already at the hole. It must have once been a small window, but now it was just a jagged square, in a stone wall, that seemed close to crumbling down. I threw my self through the space, barely fitting through, and barely missing another knife. I felt a hand grab my ankle, but a quick kick to the person's head got them to let go, letting me fall outside. I got up and ran, not looking back at the two tributes from District 1, probably trying to fit through the hole that I had just climbed through. In a second they were going to realize that they weren't going to fit through it, and would have to go around the other way. I kept running, taking random turns, and running between houses to try and make sure that they weren't going to find me. After thirty minutes I sat down underneath a giant tree, to catch my breath, since I was sure they weren't going to find me soon. Poor Juniper, I thought to myself, I hoped her unfortunate family's alright, but of course they weren't. I was going to miss her, I thought while looking up in the tree.

"Of course, I should have known," I muttered to myself as I caught sight of a familiar face up in the tree. "You know I see you," I said calling out like a five year old to the person attempting to hide in the tree.

**So how was this chapter, review and tell me what you think please.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Hi! Thanks to those who reviewed.**

**Since I can't reply to you Jane, thanks so much for the reviews! I'm glad you like it so far. Yeah it probably would have been better to keep Juniper alive a little longer, but I couldn't think of a role for her so I just ended up having to kill her off. **

A second later he jumped down from the tree landing in front of me. How he managed to jump from that height and still land on his feet was beyond me, but I was too angry at him to think much about it.

"You," I growled at Jarek, glaring at him.

"Don't be mad at me," he pleaded. "I never thought that would happen. Please forgive me."

I was kind of surprised at this, I mean he had no reason to really care what happened to Juniper or I, even if it was kind of his fault. In fact he should be happy that he was one tribute closer to winning.

"Juniper's dead." I said sadly, even though I was pretty sure he already knew that.

"I know she was gone before I arrived. It's a shame, she was really young, and didn't deserve to die."

"None of us do." I said quietly then reconsidering my anger I added "it isn't really your fault I guess. They would have killed us anyways even if they weren't looking for information about you."

"No, it's my fault," he said resoundingly.

"You saved my life?" I asked making sure that he was the person who threw a knife at the tribute from District 1.

"I threw the knife at Lucia" He said nonchalantly.

"You know you could have been one less tribute away from winning the games."

"Yeah I can count," he said sounding slightly confused. "Did you want to die?"

"No, I was just confused on why you saved my life. I guess though you would have felt bad if I had died because they were looking for information about you? I asked.

"Well yeah, and also I like to consider myself a good person, and you know…try to help people, instead of watching them die."

"Then you're not going to last long in the games."

"Well, I'm not perfect; I'm not going to help everyone. Not the career tributes at least." He said smiling. "Anyways I was kind of hoping, since there can be two winners and all, if you would be in an alliance with me?" He said quickly and looking slightly uncomfortable.

"After it went so well for me and Juniper" I said sarcastically.

"Well yeah there's a good chance that it'll end the same way. But it would let us both get farther in the game, and there's still a small chance that we both might win."

He's right, odds are that at least one, if not both, of us are going to die. And it would be helpful to be in an alliance since I'm pretty sure he's not going to try and kill me, if he was he would have just let Lucia kill me. And it's not like he wouldn't be useful considering he got a twelve and all.

"Why do you want me as a partner though, I only got a five as a training score." I asked him.

He snorted at this. "Kara, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you aren't much of an actress, at all in fact." He said laughing. "There is no way you were really trying, you knew way to much about weapons during training to only get a five."

"Not necessarily," I said halfheartedly. He just smirked at this. "Alright fine Jarek, you might be right, but still I wasn't ever going to get a twelve like you."

"Doesn't matter." Jarek said shrugging his shoulders.

"Well," I said looking for more excuses, "you're kind of a dangerous partner to have. People are always going to be hunting you, especially the careers."

"And you don't think their going to be hunting for you too," he said raising his eyebrows. "After you scarred Lucia's face, and made them look like fools by having one girl who scored a five escape the five of them who were all scored around a nine. You underestimate their vanity; they and especially Lucia are probably hunting for you just as hard."

He might be right about that, but I didn't want to mention it.

"Any other reasons why you shouldn't partner with me?" He said still smirking.

No, I didn't really have any more reasons why I shouldn't align him. And the main thing in his favor was that I had left all of my supplies with the careers. I had no weapons, no water bottle, no water purifier, and no sleeping bag. All of which are things that I wouldn't last long without. Unless I suddenly got a lot of sponsors and Katniss could send the much needed supplies, I really had no choice in the matter.

"Do you have any weapons?" I asked a little exasperated.

"Yep,"

"Fine." I said a little irritated at having to be forced into this.

"Don't have to sound so excited Kara."

While I was glaring at Jarek, Claudius Templesmith's overly excited voice resonated through the stadium.

"Attention Hunger Games tributes!" He said eagerly. "It's time for the first feast of this year's games. The feast starts at six o'clock tonight at the town square, we need at least one person from each pair of partners to touch the Cornucopia some time from six to six thirty. If you're working alone you also have to touch the Cornucopia in that half hour. Good luck, and may the odds be in your favor!"

"Perfect timing," I murmured after Claudius's proclamation. Then I turned to Jarek, "isn't a little early to already be having feast."

"Not many people have died so far, and their still trying to win back viewers."

"Well I don't like it," I said. I knew I was going to have to go; the second Jarek entered the town square all fourteen of the other tributes would immediately try and kill him. It's lucky that Katniss made me get a low score; maybe I can run to the Cornucopia and back without having to fight anyone. Maybe.

"I suppose I'll have to be the one to go." I told him.

"No, you don't have to; it wouldn't be fair at all."

"We both know that the second you enter that square everyone is going to come after you. At least when I enter the other tributes might be to busy trying to pick off tributes with higher scores to pay much attention to me."

"Still it isn't fair. You could still die."

"Give me more credit than that," I said putting on a fake smile. "I'm fast, and even if anyone does try and fight me I can still win."

"Kara-" he started but then I interrupted him.

"Jarek, I've already agree to go and risk my life. Shouldn't you be taking advantage of this or something, and enjoy the fact that you're probably going to make it through the night."

"That doesn't make-"

"Nope, just accept it, I'm going." I said smiling. It really was the only choice; and I would have felt bad sending him to his death.

"Fine Kara," he said sounding slightly irritated, "but don't die."

I grinned at this then said "don't worry; you're not going to be able to get rid of me that easily."

We estimated that it was around four o'clock, so we started to walk towards the square, spending most of the walk talking about insignificant things of our past lives. Anything or one to significant was painful to talk about and thus was avoided. Once we got closer to the square are conversation turned back to the feast.

"How are you going to do this?" Jarek asked while we continued to walk down a street.

"Um, I guess my plan is just to wait till people start fighting, and then while people are distracted run out and touch the Cornucopia then come back." I said shrugging my shoulders. I don't think there was anything else I could do, or at least, I couldn't think of anything else to do.

"This does not sound like the most thought out plan."

"No, but if you have any suggestions I'm willing to consider them."

He thought for a couple seconds then shrugging his shoulders he said "sorry, I don't."

"Then don't complain about my idea," I said grinning at him. "Where should I meet you?" I asked.

"In the remnants of one of the houses on the next block." Made sense.

"Okay, what weapons do you have?"

"A couple knifes, a sword, and a bow."

"I'll take the knifes," I said as we made our way to the next block. "I guess you should show me where I'll meet you now." I said slightly uncomfortable. I've never been very good at goodbyes.

"Here's fine" he said pointing to one of the houses that wasn't completely demolished. "I'll see you soon," he said grimly while handing me four knifes. "But, do be careful, you're not invincible." He said smiling a forced smile.

"I will," I said still kind of uncomfortable. We stood there for a few more seconds in silence. "Probably time to go," I said.

"Okay, see you soon Kara."

"Alright." I said then turned and walked the remaining blocks to the square, forcing myself not to try and calculate the odds of me making it back from the square alive.

I had reached the square by now and was hiding beside one of the demolished store fronts across the street from the square; I couldn't get any closer without being to out in the open. The square was empty at the moment; everyone else must be waiting like me outside of the square. After about ten minutes of standing there staring at the golden Cornucopia shining in the middle of the square, two hover crafts flew down carrying a giant mahogany table, with an array of weapons lying on top of it. The hover crafts dropped the table down a couple feet away from the Cornucopia and flew away, announcing the start of the feast.

Minutes ticked by and nobody moved, I was starting to consider just running out now, I could probably get to the Cornucopia by the time anyone came after me. But I had really wanted to wait till everyone else was occupied killing each other, to run. After a couple more minutes passed the idea of being the first person to go to the Cornucopia was starting to sound a lot nicer. We only had thirty minutes to touch the Cornucopia and we had already wasted at least seven of them. Fine, I decided a minute later, I'll start this. But then just as I put my foot out I saw another girl run out to the Cornucopia., I'm pretty sure she was from District Five. Just as she reached the Cornucopia two of the career tributes and Zeb stepped out into the square, making me glad that I hadn't decided to run first. As the careers started chasing after the District Five girl other tributes started to run, all heading for the Cornucopia and the feast officially began.

The careers all split up, each going after a different tribute. I decided then that now was probably the best time to run and I made my way to the Cornucopia. There were a lot of people in the square, making me think that very few of the tributes had actually made an alliance. I made it to the square without being noticed, the careers were to busy fighting their own tribute to notice me. I was just a few steps away from the Cornucopia now; I could almost reach it too when I heard a high pitched voice behind.

"Thought I would forget about you didn't you District Twelve?" Lucia screeched.

"Yeah, yeah I did" I said as I took the last few strides to the Cornucopia. Quickly I touched it then turned around to face Lucia. I was pleased to see a scar across her face from our last meeting; it was the least she deserved after she had killed Juniper.

"Well don't worry," she said smirking, "I never would have forgotten you, and I still have to repay you for this lovely scar you gave me."

"Oh don't worry, it was nothing," I said while looking for away around her. Staying and fighting her would not be a good idea, since she had teammates to help her, and there was so much fighting going on with other tributes that I could easily be stabbed by someone else while fighting her. The best thing to do was run away. I threw one of Jarek's knifes at her and while she dodged it I was able to cross a fourth of the square. When I had just about reached the half way mark a sword slashed my right arm. I winced, hissing out in pain, just as a tribute knocked me to the ground, putting the edge of his sword next to my neck.

"Stephano, I said District Twelve was mine." Lucia grumbled.

"This is the second time she's managed to get away from you." The boy tribute from District One hissed.

"You were supposed to get Jarek," Lucia said ignoring his remark.

"He hasn't shown up yet, he must have made an alliance."

"Maybe you just missed him." Lucia said sounding annoyed.

"I didn't miss him," Stephano said rolling his eyes. "You on the other hand can't seem to manage to kill one measly tribute; if I hadn't been here to help you she would have been long gone. I thought you were supposed to be good at this." He said raising his eyebrows.

Lucia didn't seem to appreciate this and instead of turning her knifes on me she went for Stephano. Just as he moved his sword away from my neck to aim it at her she had already slid her knife through his stomach.

"Can't kill a measly tribute you say," she said gloatingly. Then continued "we never needed you as a leader anyways" as she shoved him to the ground. He tried to stab her, but he was losing too much blood too quickly, and she easily stepped away from his futile attempt to kill her.

By now I had struggled up, I was also losing a lot of blood, but not as much as Stephano at least. Still, enough to make me dizzy, and worried about passing out. I did my best to run, I was almost out of the square now, and Lucia was too busy finishing off Stephano to care about coming after me.

"I'll probably see you later District 12," she shouted after me as I was almost out of the square, acknowledging that she had let me go. Thank goodness Lucia cared more about killing Stephano then about killing me. I'm not sure how likely I was to see her again though, considering how much blood I had lost. Sooner rather than later I was going to black out, probably here on the side of the street. I just have to make it a block longer I thought as stumbled away from the square, a block more and I'll be able to find Jarek. In the end though I only ended up making it halfway down the street before I passed out.

**Thanks for reading, please review and tell me what you think!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Thanks for all the reviews everyone!**

**Katniss's POV**

I waited; thirty seconds, a minute, finally two minutes, hoping that Kara would get up. But she didn't, instead the ominous pool of blood around her grew and grew. I ran through my options over and over again. There has got to be something I can do, anything. Even though I've been a trainer for five years now, I have never gotten use to this feeling of uselessness. These past four years I've seen all of my tributes die on this same TV screen, and it only gets worse and worse each year because at every Reaping I get my hopes up that maybe, this time my tribute will win, and then end up having them dashed seconds later when I see my tribute get skewered in front of millions of viewers. Knowing that this person had a family that depended on them, and that there must have been something I hadn't done that could have saved them. Knowing that this teenager, who had a full life to live, that I had got to know during training week, would never see their family again. I don't know how many more years I can take this, but if I don't do it who will?

I went through my options again. She had some sponsors, not a lot, but enough to send her something. But even if I had the money to send her the best medical supplies the capital has, it wouldn't make a difference since she was unconscious. I thought for a few more precious seconds, and then decided that there was no other option. Kara's only chance of survival lay in the hands of the tribute from District 10. Maybe if I sent him the medical supplies needed to fix her arm he would realize that she was injured, and if we were lucky, go and find her. Luck though was a terrible thing to have to rely on. Odds are he was just going to laugh when he received the meager medical supplies I could send, and not go help her.

"Peeta, can you do me a favor, and go get Aaron for me." I asked Peeta, who was sitting next to me, staring intently at his own television screen.

"Sure Katniss" He said then quickly walked over to Aaron's station. To give supplies to a tribute other than your own you have to get permission from said tributes trainer, and Aaron was Jarek's trainer.

"Yes Katniss" Aaron said sounding slightly bemused.

"Aaron, I was wondering if I could send Jarek some basic medical supplies; a needle and thread, bandages, and medicine."

He smirked at this, and then waited a second before saying "since you're new to this and all Katniss, I'll tell you that I highly doubt Jarek will try and save Kara's life. If I were him I wouldn't. In the end you'll only be wasting money that you could have transferred over to Zeb, who unlike Kara, actually stands a chance of winning. But, who am I to dissuade you from sending free supplies to my tribute. I will of course allow you to."

"How kind of you," I said sarcastically.

"Just trying to help you out," he said before walking away. Usually I wouldn't have let that go, but Kara was dying right now and there was no reason for me to waste more time arguing with someone who was never going to change their mind. Quickly, I pushed the buttons on my TV screen that would send the supplies down to Jarek, trying to forget that after I send this there really won't be anything I can do.

"I think Aaron's underestimating Jarek," Peeta said reassuringly as I had finished. "He's saved her life once already, there's no reason to think that he wouldn't do it again." I smiled, or at least tried to smile at this, but didn't really believe it.

I'm still really surprised that Kara made the alliance in the first place, especially after I had vehemently warned her against it. When she agreed to it I had been half hoping that once Jarek had fallen asleep she would steal his supplies and leave. I knew she would never do this though, Kara just wasn't like that. If she wasn't relying so much on him now, I would have been at least partially angry at her now for agreeing to the alliance in the first place. As I had told her before alliance usually always end badly, but she did need supplies, and I guess all in all she really didn't have any other option but to join him. Still, I didn't have to be happy about it, and I would guess that Aaron wasn't happy about it either.

I watched Jarek on the TV screen. He was in a partially destroyed house, laying out his sleeping bag, and looking through his supplies, probably looking for food. At first he hadn't noticed the parachute floating down in front of the house's doorway. For a brief moment of horror I worried about whether he would ever notice it. Thankfully, he heard the supplies hit the ground with a dull clank, and looked up to see them. He seemed pretty surprised at the supplies he had received when he noticed what they were, but immediately realized why he had received them and quickly, grabbed a knife, backpack and the medical supplies and made his way out the door and onto the street.

Everyone in the room now was watching the same scene, the feast was long over and this was the most interesting thing happening right now. I heard Aaron curse as Jarek walked out onto the street. If I wasn't so worried, I probably would have laughed at why he was so angry. He must have just realized now that since Jarek didn't know who sent him the supplies, he probably construed the gift as Aaron encouraging the alliance.

One of the trainers from District 11 smiled at me encouragingly as Jarek started making his way towards the Cornucopia. But I had no reason to assume that Jarek was going to try and save Kara. While he could have brought that knife for protection against other tributes, he also could have brought it to finish Kara off.

Kara was only about a block and a half away from where she was suppose to meet Jarek, so it didn't take him long to reach her. He ran down the first block and when he finally saw her he started sprinting. My hope, which I was starting to believe was a dangerous thing, grew as I saw this. Maybe, just maybe he'll save her; maybe she'll be fine, well as fine as someone could be in these circumstances.

"Kara," he yelled as he saw her "Kara, wake up." But as much as I wished she would, she didn't wake up. "No, no, no," I heard him murmured in a voice that sounded as if it was full of horror, which was encouraging, and then he opened up the medical kit, and began to clean and bandage her arm.

"Thank goodness," I murmured at the TV screen, even though her survival wasn't assured yet.

"You owe me dinner," I heard a trainer from District 5, tell the trainer from District 6. I held back an angry retort at this. They were betting over my tribute, on things that determined whether she would live or die. Did they really not care that much about these children's lives?

It took at least thirty minutes for Jarek to fix up the wound, he seemed to have some medical knowledge, and did a good job bandaging her arm. Once he was done she started stirring. I signed in relief at this, that for the moment anyways, Kara was going to be alive.

"You're really lucky," Aaron called over to me, sounding slightly irritated.

"Far from it," I murmured to the television screen.

**Back to Kara's POV**

I awoke to see Jarek staring down at me looking worried, it took me a second to realize that I was really dizzy, covered in blood, and that my left arm really hurt. It was then that everything started to come back to me. Jarek grinned as he realized that I was conscious. "Is everything alright?" he said still grinning and looking relieved.

"Yeah, everything's great" I said sarcastically while looking at my bandaged arm, and remembering everything that happened at the feast.

"How are you feeling? Do you want so medicine to get rid of the pain?" he said a little more seriously.

"That would be nice." He handed me two pills, and a canteen of water. I felt kind of bad that I was taking something so precious, but my arm really did hurt. After I had taken the medicine I tried to get up, there was no reason to be sitting in the middle of a street so close to the Cornucopia.

"I don't think you should get up, at least not until you eat and drink something." Jarek said.

"We can't stay here; we're too out in the open. Let's go back to camp, and then we can eat."

"Can you walk?" Jarek said uncertainly.

I rolled my eyes at this and got up. It wasn't too bad as long as I didn't move my arm. I was a little wobbly, probably from loss of blood, but besides that, I wasn't in to bad of shape. I just had to be careful that I didn't get blood poisoning. I did have to lean on Jarek, but eventually we made it to our camp.

"I think I'll take the next feast." Jarek told me once we had walked into the house.

"Oh, really" I said slightly exasperated then raising my eyebrows I added, "you think you'd do a better job than I did."

"Kara, if I hadn't of known that if you had been dead they would have removed your body, I would have thought you were dead. You had lost a lot of blood." He said slightly smirking while handing me some rabbit that he most have saved before we had become allies.

"Doesn't matter, I'm still alive."

"Just barely."

"But that's all that matters." I said before taking a bite of the rabbit, then adding "you did a great job with my arm by the way, where did you learn about fixing up injuries?"

"A couple younger siblings and not enough money to afford to go to an actual doctor teaches you a few things, and also, I kind of wanted to be a doctor when I was older." He said sounding slightly embarrassed. "You're cut actually isn't that bad, it just bled a lot. If you're careful it should feel a lot better in a week."

After that we finished eating in silence, and drank the last of the water we had. Tomorrow we would have to look for more.

"I'll take first watch," Jarek said after a moment of silence, then added, "and probably the second watch too."

"Excellent," I said yawning. It had been a long day.

"Kara, thanks for going to the feast" he said, while he walked over to where I was standing.

"You're welcome, but it's not exactly shocking that I went. There really wasn't any other option."

He rolled his eyes at this and took a step closer to me. "Kara, there's always another option." Then to my astonishment, he leaned towards me and kissed me, full on the lips.

**I'm sorry that this chapter is so short, but this seemed like the right place to end. Also, I'm sorry that nothing new happened during this chapter and that there wasn't any action, but please review anyways and tell me what you think! How was Katniss's POV? Should I have done it? Was she at all in character?**


	9. Chapter 9

**Hi, sorry it's been awhile, but I needed to figure out how I was going to take this story. I've figured it out now though, so hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently now. Thanks for the reviews everyone, and I'm really sorry for those who had problems reviewing last chapter, I had removed an authors note I had posted a while ago and that messed everything up. But, it should be fine now. I'm warning you now though that this is definitely a filler chapter, but I promise it will get more interesting after this.**

Needless to say I was pretty surprised, until a second later I realized why he was kissing me. I backed away slightly annoyed. Then, whispered "trying to win sponsors are we?"

He smiled, in amusement, as he took a step away from me, not bothering to whisper "oh yes Kara, because being the first tribute to ever score a twelve didn't get me any sponsors."

"You can always get more." I countered.

"Whatever Kara," he said rolling his eyes and then added "goodnight" and walked over to the corner of the house where our supplies were and sat down looking slightly annoyed, no that wasn't it, maybe it was exasperation. I guess it doesn't really matter though, or at least it shouldn't matter. Still, I couldn't help wondering whether he actually meant anything by the kiss, as I laid down in the sleeping bag. Probably not, I thought to myself and this is a dangerous train of thought. I repeated to myself what Katniss had told me before the games started, that gettingattached to people was never a good thing. Maybe, if I could do it without becoming attached, acting like we were in love each other could help us. It certainly helped Katniss and Peeta, and while yes Jarek probably has quite a few sponsors, I could certainly use more. Could I do it without growing attached? I looked up at him; he noticed me still awake and immediately looked worried.

"Does your arm hurt? I could get you more medicine or water."

"No, I'm fine thanks." The Capital's medicine was very good, and as long as I didn't move my arm, I would be fine.

"Well if you're sure, goodnight Kara." He said with a smile.

"Goodnight Jarek." I said before finally falling asleep with my last thoughts being that no, I couldn't do it without becoming attached.

I slept terribly that night, Juniper's face kept appearing in my dreams, abruptly waking me up. Or I would end up rolling onto my injured arm while I sleep, which would instantaneously wake me up. When I eventually gave up sleeping and opened my eyes, I saw Jarek, sitting in the corner of the room staring absentmindedly at the door of the house.

I started to sit up working hard not to move my injured arm, but even getting up was excruciating. I hissed out in pain, and decided that I didn't want to even attempt to stand, and instead just sat with my back against the wall.

"I'm so sorry, Kara." Jarek said looking a little guilty. "Here, I'll get you more medicine."

"Thanks," I said, as he came back carrying two pills and what looked to be the rest of the very little water we had left.

"Why don't we just stay here today, and if we have enough water tomorrow too."

"I don't think I have much of a choice in the matter," I said staring at my wounded arm.

"Can I see your arm?" Jarek asked walking over towards me.

I grimaced at the thought. "But that's going to be painful isn't it."

"Well, yeah it is, but other wise you'll never know if your arm is getting better."

"Or worse," I added grimly. But lifted my arm so he could undue the bandages. Thankfully the medicine worked fast so it wasn't as painful as before.

"Look at that," he said. "It's definitely getting better."

"Doesn't feel like it."

"Well it is." He said happily while rebandaging my arm.

"It's your turn to take watch now," he said once he'd finished.

"I can do that."

He smiled and then went to sleep. We spent the rest of the day and the next like this, alternating between sleeping, watching for any other tributes and talking. All in all it wasn't a bad two days. I don't know how we managed to get our water to last this long though, but we did. On the third day, after I had woken up, we had no choice but to get water. By this time though the pain in my arm had dulled enough that my arm was nearly functional.

We stepped out of the house, and I lead us to the pond that Juniper had shown me, it was far away from our camp, but it was the only source of water I knew about.

"Jarek have you killed anyone yet?" I asked on the way over, regretting the words the instant they came out of my mouth.

"Wow that was blunt." He said smiling. "But, no I haven't. There has never been a need to and, besides you; I've been trying to avoid people as much as possible these last few days. What about you? Have you had to kill someone?"

"No, thankfully."

"Really, not even at the feast? I never did find out what happened. Who cut your arm?"

"Oh yeah, I guess I never did tell you what happened. Well, first I waited until a couple of other tributes had tried to reach the Cornucopia before I started running too. The career tributes were already there, and Lucia immediately went after me. I touched the Cornucopia then threw a knife at her and tried to run away. However once I had crossed a portion of the square Stephano, from District 1, slashed my arm with his sword. Luckily though Stephano made a few comments to Lucia about her inability to kill anyone, and she decided that she would rather kill him then me. She let me run away, but was kind enough to inform me that she would eventually come after me."

"Well that was stupid."

"I guess she, unlike you, actually believes that I am truly only skilled enough to score a five, and thought killing Stephano, who scored a nine, was better than killing me."

"I guess that silly plan of yours actually worked then."

"I can't actually take credit for that; it was all Katniss's idea." We had reached the pond by now and were too excited about getting more water to talk.

"Should we look for food now?" I turned to ask him after I took a swig of my newly purified water.

Jarek ignored me though, and instead stared intently into the trees surrounding the pond. "Shh, someone's coming," he reaching for two knives. Quickly I pulled out my own knife just as two tributes appeared from behind the trees and started making their way towards the pond.

"Please, don't run," a girl voice called over. "We don't mean harm."

I chuckled at this blatant lie, of course she means harm.

"Shall we go?" I asked pointing to the path between the dilapidate houses on the opposite side of the trees.

"Might as well see if they have to say" Jarek said shrugging his shoulders, but he raised the knifes in his hands.

"And if they try to kill us?" I replied sarcastically.

"Will be fine," he said confidentially. I was about to ask him if he was crazy, but both tributes from District 7 had already reached the pond and were standing about eight feet in front of us. The five days they had been in the games didn't seem to have done them well. Both were covered in scratches and dirt, and leaves seemed to be entwined in the girl's long black hair.

"Thanks for waiting" she said with an affable smile. "I'm Kalina, and this is Fabian, we're both from District 7."

"Jarek, District 10," Jarek said with an equally jovial smile.

"Kara, District 12," I said not nearly as friendly.

"We have a proposition for the both of you." Fabian said, but only looked at Jarek. "We were hoping you would join a temporary alliance with us."

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

"So we can eliminate some of the careers." He said shrugging his shoulders.

"So you want us to kill the careers for you?" Jarek said with obvious amusement.

"No," Kalina said as if it was the most preposterous thing in the world. "We would work together of course."

"Why can't you do this alone?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"Four is always better than two." Fabian said sounding slightly irritated.

"There are five people in the careers' alliance: both tributes from four, the girl tribute from one, the girl from two and that guy from 12." Kalina said. "There are only seven of us left, sooner rather than later they will have the advantage and you can't possibly want one of them to win." She said them with so much venom that it was easy to suspect that she had already had an encounter with them.

"We want to kill at least three or four of them," Fabian said. "That way the rest of us can have a better chance. As two separate groups of two, I don't think either of us has much of a chance at taking any of them out, or if we do one person in the pair will probably end up dying. But as a group of four we can take some of them out without dying ourselves."

"So what do you say" Kalina said grinning at Jarek.

"We're going to have to think about," Jarek said formally.

"Alright," Kalina said thinking for a moment and then adding "if you do decide to join us, meet us here after the anthem plays."

"That sounds fine," Jarek said

"Great, I hope to see you soon," she said smiling at Jarek then adding "bye."

"Bye," Jarek replied, then picked up his water bottle, which he had left on the ground, and both of us quickly started walking away from them towards our campsite.

Once we were halfway their, and I knew we were far enough away that they couldn't hear us I said "you want to join them, don't you," slightly exasperated.

"Well, yeah, yeah I do," he replied looking a little embarrassed.

"Jarek as anyone ever told you that you are much to trusting."

"Not trusting Kara, just optimistic."

"Crazy is more like it."

"Nope, just optimistic."

"So, you think you're going to win this all?" I asked sarcastically.

"Well, I'm not that optimistic. But, we can't win until the careers are dead, and I don't think we can assume that anyone but us will kill them off."

"What happened to avoiding everyone else?"

"Well, you can only do that for so long." He said, not managing to keep a tone of sadness from reaching his voice. And that was all we said for the rest of our walk back to camp.

Did I want to kill the careers? I wondered. I didn't know, that was the scary thing, there was a chance that I just might actually want to kill someone. I just kept picturing Lucia, killing poor, innocent Juniper again and again in my mind, seeing her be crowned champion, living while all the others are dead, just because I didn't want to join with the tributes from seven.

Once we had reached our camp, Jarek turned to me. "Well Kara, what do you want to do?"

"I don't really know yet," I said

"Well," he said looking up at the sky to take a guess at when the anthem would play. "You've got like six hours to decide."

"It's all up to me?"

"Well, yeah, you know my opinion, and if both of us don't want to join the alliance then we shouldn't." He said shrugging his shoulders, and looking surprised that I even had to ask.

"We can't trust them." I said, stating the obvious.

"Oh, of course not, I fully expect that once they think enough careers are dead they will try and kill us."

"Then why would we join them?" I said raising my eyebrows.

"Like Fabian said four is better than two when you're trying to kill some of the careers."

"But there are five of them."

"We'll we won't fight more than two or three at a time."

"Oh," I said feeling a little stupid. "Okay, but how will we not get killed by Kalina or Fabian."

"We could just leave after two of the careers are killed, never giving them the chance to try, and will be careful."

"Will be careful," I replied sarcastically.

"Yes," he said with a smile. "Very, very careful."

"You're right you are optimistic."

"I'm always right," he said with a smile. "Should we go find food now?"

"Of course." I said. Then we started looking for food. Maybe its just us, but I don't think there's much food in District 13. We were able to find some berries and a couple of other edible plants, but it took awhile. Jarek laid down a couple snares, that we would have to come back and check later, but we spent most of the six hours searching for food. Luckily though, we didn't really have much else to do.

Hunting and gathering for plants gave me time to think. Someone had to kill the careers, before the killed the rest of us. And maybe it was just Jarek's optimism spreading to me, but if all four of us went after one maybe two career tributes at a time then we should be able to kill some of them without dying ourselves. I definitely do not want Lucia, the girl who killed Juniper, winning this. And maybe Jarek and I could leave the alliance before Fabian and Kalina try to kill us. If the careers can successfully join together to kill the other tributes off, than why shouldn't we be able to do it to against them? This could work. Right?

After we found enough plants for the next three days we ate, and then checked the snares, only to find them empty.

"Well Kara what do you think? Should we join with Fabian and Kalina? Jarek asked me, as the sky above began to darken.

"What score did both of them get?" I asked.

"Kalina got an 8, Fabian got a 7."

I was silent for a couple more minutes trying to think up any more reasons that we haven't come up with on why we shouldn't join them. But in the end I couldn't think of any more.

"Yeah, let's join them." I said resoundingly.

"Great," Jarek said but for once he didn't smile. He looked up at the sky instead "I think we should probably head over to the pond then."

"Did you change your mind about joining them?" I asked a little confused.

"No," he said calmly.

"Well, alright then." I said still a little confused at the change of attitude.

Kalina and Fabian were already waiting for us at the pond, even though I was pretty sure that it was at least an hour until the anthem plays.

"You decided to join us!" Kalina said in an overly high and shrill voice.

"Yep," Jarek said his usually persistent smile coming back to him now.

"I was thinking that we should start tonight." Fabian said seriously.

"Okay, but do you have a plan?" Jarek asked.

"Well we know their staying in a house overlooking the town square, and that they usually go hunting at night." Kalina said.

"We were hoping to just wait each time until they go hunting, and then kill the person they leave behind to guard the supplies." Added Fabian.

"Why would they leave someone behind to guard the supplies again after they had already lost one teammate that way?"

"We're assuming that they'll probably leave two people behind instead. Kalina said, "and will still be able to take two of them easily."

"And if they don't," Fabian said, "will just think up another plan."

"Where will our camp be during all this?" Jarek asked. "We're going to need a good hiding spot if we're going to have to watch for them to go hunting."

"Well we haven't completely figured that part out yet." Fabian said.

"We were just thinking about staying in one of demolished stores near the house they're staying in." Said Kalina

"Wouldn't they check the buildings nearby frequently though?" I asked. "Especially after they find one of their teammates dead? They might assume that the killer would hide out there."

"I wouldn't worry about it." Kalina said, then shrugging her shoulders she continued, "we could just kill the person who comes across us."

"What if they all come?" I challenged.

"Same answer," Fabian replied. "But I doubt that will happen, and if they do come to check, probably not all of them will come to the same house at the same time."

"Kara," Jarek said, "if we take some of their supplies after we kill the person, then they'll just think we were after their supplies, not just trying to kill them, and would probably assume that the killer ran as far away from the square as fast as he or she could to avoid the wrath of angry careers."

"Why don't we start walking over," Kalina suggested after Jarek finished. "We could finalize our plan on the way there."

There really wasn't much to finalize, so we ended up walking in silence, with Kalina saying something to Jarek every once in a while. Fabian and Kalina seemed confident that their plan was going to work, Jarek wasn't confident exactly but he still seemed to be under the impression that everything was going to work out. I on the other hand wasn't so sure. A lot of things could go wrong with their plan. It was far from perfect, but I suppose that there probably isn't a plan that is perfect. Still I wish we had a better plan.

The closer we got to the town square the quieter we got. By the time we had reached the streets that bordered the back of the stores that were in the square, no one dared talk. Each of us had a weapon in are hand and were carefully watching our surroundings.

We made our way around the perimeter of the streets and at some points we even had to crawl because the stores were destroyed enough to make us visible from inside the square. I stared at each building intently, trying to find a place that could hold all four of us, keep us out of sight from the careers, and had an entrance into the square and to the streets behind the building.

After going a fourth a way around the square I found the store, I don't know what it use to be, but it still had a roof, or at least half a roof, and we wouldn't be seen by the careers. I taped Jarek on the shoulder and pointed to the building. He looked at the building, smiled at me then nudged, Kalina. She grinned at Jarek when she realized that he was trying to suggest a building for us to stay in.

"Great job," Kalina mouthed still grinning at him. I was really beginning to dislike this girl.

"No, Kara found it." Jarek mouthed back, but of course she didn't seem to understand.

"You know," Fabian whispered, "we can talk, just as long as you whisper."

"I know, I just feel better not talking at all." Kalina said then asked Fabian, "how is this for a camp?"

"It looks fine, we're a little closer to the careers than I prefer, but I don't think will find anything better."

"Where exactly are the careers staying?" I asked Fabian as we walked into the building. He lead me over to the front of the building, near a window and quickly and carefully pointed out a building a couple stores to our right. It was the only building around the square that was completely intact, but I wasn't able to get a better look than that since I didn't want the careers to see me. Fabian was right though, the careers were closer than I would prefer.

**What do you think? Please review!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Thanks for the reviews everyone! **

"What do we do now?" Jarek asked looking expectantly at Fabian. Night was beginning to fall, and everyone was looking a little tired.

"We need to have someone watching from each of the two entrance ways into our camp constantly," Fabian said. "That way we can keep an eye on the careers."

"I'll take one of the first watches," I said stifling back a yawn; I wouldn't be able to sleep anyways, knowing the careers were so close by. This way by the time my watch was over I would be too tired to care anymore.

"Great," Fabian said. "Then I'll be the other person. I'll take the front door, you take the back."

"Alright," I said.

"And I probably don't have to remind you, but we do need to be quiet."

"Obviously," Kalina said and with that Jarek and Kalina got into their sleeping bags, and I walked to the back door while Fabian walked to the front. Door, wasn't even a good description of it, it was more of a bigger than average window. The building we were staying in wasn't large by any means though. It had three rooms, but the walls that divided the rooms were all partially destroyed, so from any room you could see the middle of all the others.

If it wasn't for the full moon tonight I don't know how much I would have been able to see during my watch. It was late and dark, and of course there was no light coming from the career's house so all I had was the moon. The lack of light though didn't matter in the end because for the first three or so hours absolutely nothing happened. It wasn't until the end of my watch, when I was struggling to stay awake that something actually happened. One of the girl tributes, whose name I didn't remember, walked out of the house and stood there for awhile staring intently at the areas surrounding her building. I ducked when she looked in my direction, praying that she hadn't seen me. Luckily for me, she must not have any of those night vision sunglasses things, so she didn't see me. After I was positive that she was gone I peeked out the window verified that no one was out there, and then continued my watch. Thankfully about thirty minutes later Jarek came out to take my place.

"See anything of consequence?" He asked giving me his customary smile.

"I saw a career come outside and look around, but then she went back inside." I replied yawning.

"Fabian said the same thing. They must not hunt at night. Or at least they didn't tonight."

"Yeah," I said yawning again. "Well I'm going to bed, goodnight.**" **Then I walked over to the main room of the building. I slid into Jarek's sleeping bag, not even having time to worry about Fabian, Kalina, or the careers killing me while I slept, before I was fast asleep. I was able to survive through the night though, and I woke up to see Fabian still fast asleep, and to hear Kalina and Jarek whispering in the back room. Always a great thing to hear when you wake up, I thought to myself sarcastically.

I made my way slowly to the back room, trying to catch as much as the conversation as I could before I entered the room. I almost felt a little bad about listening in on their conversation, but while I was pretty sure that Jarek didn't have any plans to kill me I was pretty sure that Kalina did.

"I like Fabian and all," I heard her say to Jarek. "But he's just not that great of a fighter. Yeah he's clever and cunning but that's really it. He was lucky to get a seven, but even that score isn't that good."

"Oh, I disagree seven's a great score," Jarek said.

"Still, I can't help but feel that he wouldn't have made it nearly this far without me, and sometimes I wonder exactly how much he has contributed to our group."

"Well he did think up this plan." Jarek said sounding kind of confused.

"Well, yeah but only a part of it, and that's all he's done."

Is she trying to convince Jarek to leave me and join an alliance with her I wondered? Well she's at least trying to convince him that she and Fabian aren't close. I decided then that I was done listening to this conversation, and walked loudly into the room, announcing my presence.

"Oh hey Kara," Kalina said at my entrance.

"Hi Kalina, shouldn't you be watching the front door?" I asked somehow managing to keep a tone of annoyance out of my voice.

"Yeah, nothing had happened so far during my watch, so I was just checking to see if Jarek saw anything. But I'll go back now."

"Did you see anything?" I asked once Kalina had left.

"No, it was incredibly uneventful. He said smirking.

He was about to say something else but was instead interrupted by loud noises from outside. Immediately we both turned around to look out the door. Four careers were standing at the back entrance to their camp, talking rather loudly. We both ducked out of the window at the same time and went through the entryway into the main room. Kalina, noticing the look of horror on our faces instantly realized what the matter was and woke up Fabian. Both of them backed up against the still standing portion of the wall between the main room and the back room while Jarek and I backed against the other. We all held our breaths as the careers walked by

"Should we try are usual hunting route today?" I heard Zeb say.

"No," Lucia said. "It's not like it has been working for us, let's look somewhere else."

"We could go left instead of right at that first street?" A girl voice suggested. And that was the most I heard before they were to far away to hear anything else.

"What time would you guess that it is?" Fabian whispered to Kalina.

"Probably around nine," she said

"Where's the fifth person?" I asked

"In their building," Jarek suggested. "Watching the Cornucopia from inside, making sure no one takes their supplies."

"Probably," Fabian said.

"There's a pretty easy way to find out." Kalina said smirking.

She's just like a career herself, I thought to myself. "We can't try and kill the person now." I said, regretting the sentence the second it left my lips. Quickly, trying to make myself not sound nearly as weak I said, "wouldn't it be best to wait a day or two? Then we could figure out their schedule, and know how long it usually takes them to go hunting."

"Kara's right, it would be safer to have an idea of their routine." Jarek said

"What if they don't have one?" Kalina asked.

"Then at least we'll know that," Jarek responded.

"I suppose it's probably best to wait a day or two." Fabian said after a moment of consideration."

"If that's what you all want." Kalina responded with a shrug.

"We need to keep having two people watching the front and back entrance to the building at all times." Fabian said. "Alert the rest of us the second you see any of the careers."

"I suppose it's my turn to watch the back door." I said turning to Jarek.

"Yes, yes it is," Jarek said with a mocking smile. "And I'll bet you'll just have a great time doing that."

"Oh, I bet I will too," I said sarcastically.

"Jarek and Kara," Fabian said. "If you don't mind me asking, how much food do you guys have?"

"Enough to feed all of us for about two days I would guess," I responded.

"I'd say one to two days," Jarek chimed in.

"Oh, good," Kalina said happily. "We have about enough for a day, so hopefully we won't have to worry about food for awhile."

I walked out of the main room after that, to my watch. I spent the next hour memorizing the area around me, trying to forget how bored I really was. Faintly I could hear Jarek and Kalina whispering, but other than that nothing was going on.

"Hey Kara," Jarek said walking into the back room.

"Hi Jarek, are you enjoying your break from watch?" I asked still staring out into the surrounding streets.

"Not, really, there is very little to do. I was kind of starting to hope that my mentor would send me a book or something. Have you seen anything interesting?"

"Not at all."

"Well that's not necessarily a bad thing." Jarek said, then he was quiet for a little bit before asking me "Kara, what's District 12 like?" And that's how we spent the rest of my shift, talking, about just about anything. It actually wasn't that bad. I eventually declared that it was time for his shift, and a little after that the careers came back.

"Kara," he said cutting me off from my description of my favorite food. "They're back."

Quickly, and quietly we both slid into the main room. "Careers." I whispered urgently. Within a second Kalina and Fabian appeared in the room and we all backed into our respective corners.

"Catch anyone," a boy voice called out to the careers.

"Did you hear a canon Sampson." Lucia grumbled.

"Well, no," a boy who must have been Sampson said.

"Well then how do you think it went?" Lucia said crossly. Apparently Sampson was smart enough not to answer this.

"Did you see anyone on your watch today?" Zeb asked a lot calmer than Lucia.

"No, no one came any where near our camp." Sampson said confidently. But, after that they must have gone in their camp since we could no longer hear them.

"How long would you say they were gone?" Kalina asked in an almost inaudible whisper.

"Like five hours," I said just as quietly.

"Sounds about right," Fabian said.

"Maybe we should watch them tomorrow too," Jarek suggested. "That way we can see if they're consistent."

"Yeah we probably should," Kalina said. "But it's just so monotonous, sitting here."

"You'll be just fine." Fabian said without sympathy. And this is how the next day ended up being exactly like yesterday was. The only differences were that Jarek and I's conversations were a little different today, and that Zeb was the one who had to stay behind for the careers to watch their camp, not Sampson. Like yesterday the day really wasn't that bad; the only problem was that I kept reminding myself that tomorrow we were going to try and kill someone.

The next morning I woke up a little earlier than I had to to take over Jarek's watch. Both he and Kalina would have until the Careers left their camp to hunt to sleep, and then we would get ready to face the remaining career.

"Sleep well," Jarek asked as I walked over to him.

"Not to bad actually," I said.

"Well, I hope you have a good time keeping watch, I'm going to sleep." He said braggingly.

"Alright," I said with a smile, and he left. It was a lovely morning. The game makers had been pretty lenient with the weather so far. No extreme heat, cold, or rain. The weather was almost always perfect, but that will probably change sooner rather than later.

Quicker than I would prefer, the careers came out to go hunting. When I caught sight of them in the doorway of their camp I scampered into the main room and shook both Jarek and Kalina awake. They woke up surprisingly quickly and immediately got up and made sure they were out of sight of the careers. Fabian was with us too by the time the careers started walking down the street towards us. I could distinguish both Lucia and Zeb's voice so I knew that they weren't the unlucky career tribute left to guard camp today.

"How are we going to do this?" I asked once the careers had started their hunt.

"It would probably be best to draw the person out into the open." Kalina suggested.

"But, how will we do that?" Fabian asked.

"Easy," I said. "We just have to make a lot of noise and the career will come."

"We should all try to stay out of sight until they career is outside," Jarek suggested

"Then what?" I asked.

"We kill the person." Fabian said sounding slightly confused.

"Well I know that," I replied. "But do we have any plans for how to kill said person."

"Not anything more than what we just went over," Kalina said. "We just stay out of sight until the person comes out of the building, and then we can surprise the person and kill him or her. Preferably from a distance."

Needless to say I was less than pleased with how detailed our plan was. But it was only one person right? And there's four of us, it's not like it could be too hard.

"Shall we leave now?" Fabian asked.

"Might as well," said Kalina cheerfully. "Do you both have weapons?" She said, turning to Jarek and I.

"Yeah, we're fine." Jarek said.

"Perfect," Kalina said still being overly cheerful.

"Which weapon would you prefer?" Jarek asked me while we walked over to our supplies.

"I'll take a sword this time," I said trying to keep my voice steady.

"Yes, then I get the knives," Jarek said in a tone of mock victory.

"Ready," Fabian said, he was also holding a sword in his hand.

"I suppose so." I said while Jarek nodded in agreement.

We then walked out of the back entrance onto the street, doing our best to stay out of sight from the career's camp by walking as close to the other buildings as possible. Since we were only a couple houses from the careers, it took very little time to get beside the career's camp. We all stood against the wall at the side of the careers building, where there were no windows. The building was brick, two stories, and was almost completely whole, although there were obvious signs of damage to the roof. I was barely able to see a girl tribute sitting behind the empty window at the front of the building, staring absentmindedly at the buildings to the right of her. She had not noticed us yet.

"What do we do now?" I mouthed.

Kalina, pointed at a pile of rocks a couple meters away from my feet, then mimed throwing one. Apparently she had decided that it would be my job to get the tributes attention. I picked up the rock, and tiptoed over to a spot precariously close to where the career was sitting. With careful aim, I threw the rock hard at the building just opposite me. As one might have guessed though, I was not nearly strong enough to actually hit said building, and instead the rock hit some gravel a good thirty feet away from the building, hardly making any noise, and definitely not attracting the career tribute's attention. Trying to pretend I wasn't embarrassed I quickly grabbed another rock, and instead aimed for the Cornucopia, wondering why I didn't try that before. The flash of movement, and the dull metallic thud woke the girl from her reverie, and we could all hear her moving around in the building. Fabian gave me a thumbs up, while Kalina rolled her eyes at me.

We all tightened our hold on our weapons. Vaguely I wished I could see through walls, that way I might actually know what the girl was doing. But instead I had to sit here and wait, hoping the girl walked in our direction, and unluckily for her she did. After about a minute she appeared in the corner of the building. When she rounded the building she turned, and saw us, a trickle of fear was evident in her eyes. And with that she did what any sane person would do when confronted with four well armed people. She ran.

In a split second she turned around just as a knife went soaring from Jarek's hand towards her. It landed harmlessly into the gravel, though while she darted through the middle of the square. We raced through the square after her, I should expected this really, but somehow I expected a career to confront us instead of run. But I guess as I said before, any sane person would run when they were outnumbered four to one. While she may have been able to get away if it was just Jarek, Fabian, and me, she wasn't faster than Kalina.In a couple of strides Kalina was only a few feet away from the girl and threw a knife perfectly between the girls shoulder blades. She fell down, and struggled and failed to get to her feet. Fabian caught up to her next, and without a moments hesitation slid his sword through her stomach and her canon went off.

Fabian pulled his sword out of her stomach, and tried to wipe her blood off on the grown. Kalina did the same. It was a horrifying scene, and I couldn't help being horrified at myself. While I didn't actually kill this girl, I certainly contributed to her death. This girl had a family, hopes and dreams. And now, now, well I guess its best not to think about it. Dwelling on it to much will only cause more harm than good.

"You alright?" Jarek whispered, probably hoping that he wouldn't be over heard by the cameras, while Kalina and Fabian finished cleaning off their weapons.

"Yeah," I lied, staring at the ground.

"Hey," he said grabbing my hand and still talking almost inaudibly. "I know it's awful, but only two people can win; it's either her or you."

"I know," I said. I thought about how this same girl in front of me had just sat there while Lucia had killed Juniper, and in her own way I guess she had kind of contributed to Junipers death. This made me feel a little less horrified with myself.

Jarek smiled again then let go of my hand and turned to face Kalina and Fabian. "We should probably head back now," he said.

"Alright," Kalina said, and we all turned around in headed back in the direction of the square.

"Do you know what district she was from?" Fabian asked calmly.

"Four," Kalina and Jarek replied at the same time.

Before to long we reached the main square, and walked over to the Cornucopia. There in the middle of it was a vast array of supplies.

"Since we're just pretending to be one person we can't take too much." Fabian warned.

Everything was so tempting; but I tried to limit myself to just the stuff I needed. I grabbed a sleeping bag, that way I wouldn't have to rely on Jarek lending me his anymore, an extra knife, and a loaf of bread. Jarek grabbed a water purifying kit and a couple apples. Kalina took two knives and a sword, while Fabian took a loaf of bread and some dried fruit. Hopefully the careers hadn't taken to good a stock of their supplies, because one person definitely wouldn't have taken this much.

For the first time so far in the games it actually started raining, hard, so quickly we ran back to our dry camp.

"How long until they start hunting us down?" I murmured to Jarek.

"Definitely not long," he replied solemnly.

**Thanks for reading and please review!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Hi everyone, I know its been a while and I am sorry about that. I had a hard time motivating myself to write during the summer, and during the fall between sports and school I had no time to write. But now cross country is over and hopefully I should be able to update more frequently. Again, I really am sorry. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, especially Kevin-Genesis for frequently reminding me to update.**

**In the last chapters Kara and Jarek had teamed up with Fabian and Kalina, the tributes from District 7 to eliminate some of the careers. They killed the girl from District 4, and now they're waiting for the careers to come back from their hunt. **

**Foxface137- Thank you so so much for taking the time to review all ten chapters. You have no idea how excited I was to suddenly see that I had ten more reviews on my story. No, I have not gotten swine flu or any other sickness really, and I really am very sorry that it took me so long to update. I hope your not to angry with me, but I understand why you would be.**

We waited in our camp for about ten minutes; it wasn't until the rain had started to slow down that careers came. Crashing through the main square, and walking over to their camp.

"I know I heard a canon, Zeb" Lucia growled as they walked nearer to us. At the sound of Lucia's voice Jarek grasped my hand, pulling us away from the front entrance until our backs were against a wall. Even then though he didn't let go of my hand.

"Just making sure," Zeb muttered sounding annoyed.

"Celia must have killed somebody," Lucia said her tone changing from angry to sanguine.

They were silent until they had neared their camp then a male voice called out "Celia." Of course no one answered. The boy called out "Celia" again, and then I would assume that they entered their camp, from my position though I couldn't see them. The only thing I heard after that was a metal clanging sound, as if someone had dropped a weapon on the ground, maybe a couple. Either way besides that, I don't think they said anything. A couple seconds later they left the building and walked back out onto the square. I would guess that all the careers were staring at Lucia, waiting to see what her reaction would be, waiting to see what she would decide to do.

After a minute Lucia asked, surprisingly calm, "Sampson is there any supplies missing from the Cornucopia?"

"I'm pretty sure we're missing one of the sleeping bags and some of the food too." He responded after he had reached the Cornucopia.

Faintly I could hear Lucia curse under her breath then say "alright, well I guess we're going to have to find this thief. Zeb and I will check the surrounding streets; you both can stay here and check these buildings. There's a chance, however small it may be, that the thief is still here.

"Sounds good," a female voice said. "See you in a couple hours?" she asked Lucia.

"Probably," she said then she and Zeb started walking away. Jarek caught my gaze and smiled, I think he was trying to reassure me, but his smile felt a little fake, as if he was worried too. He let go of my hand, and grasped his weapon a little firmer.

Fabian started randomly waving his hands around, it took me a couple seconds to realize that he was trying to tell Jarek and I to go stand guard at the back door. I didn't have any problems with this so quickly Jarek and I took our positions at the back of the house standing so we were out of sight from the street, but near enough to the door so we could quickly kill anyone who entered.

Everything was quiet after Lucia and Zeb had left, I was beginning to wonder if Sampson and the other girl were even looking for us, but was smart enough to quickly realize that of course they were looking for us**.** Eventually they messed up though, and I heard what sounded like a muffled stomp, as if someone had tripped but caught themselves, a little outside our doorway. Someone was about to come through the back door towards Jarek and I.

It was then that I started to wonder what would happen of both careers came through the back door. Would Fabian and Kalina come and help? Or would they just run away? Both careers would be too occupied with us to chase after them. Odds are if it was Jarek and I against both careers one, if not both, of us would die. This would be in Kalina and Fabian's advantage. This train of thought is useless though, I thought to myself, there's nothing I can do about this now, it's much to late.

I looked at Jarek who was standing next to me; he was staring intently at the door holding a knife in his hand, ready to throw it. Realizing that I should probably be staring at the door too I turned back to the front door clutching my sword tighter. It was a good thing I did because only a few seconds later the girl career appeared in the doorway holding a mace out in front of her. In the second it took her to realize we were there Jarek threw, with perfect aim, a knife at her head. She was still quicker though and ducked, but only barely missed the knife then she called out "Sampson."

I could hear a stomping sound then heard Sampson barge through the front door. I smiled at this; apparently luck was on our side. Kalina and Fabian didn't have a chance to run away, they would have to fight Sampson and we would only have to deal with this girl.

Jarek immediately followed her outside with two more knives in his hands, and I trailed directly behind, sword in hand. She had gotten hold of Jarek's knife and was standing nonchalantly a couple a feet away from our camp, a knife in one hand and a mace in the other. Once Jarek and I were out she threw the knife at Jarek, but he swatted it away as if it were just a fly. Disappointment and a hint of fear flickered in her eyes at this; she must not have expected to miss. Quickly though she regained her composure and moved towards me, the easier kill. She raised her mace and swung, aiming for my stomach. I blocked it though and quickly retaliated, she stepped to the left avoiding the worst part of my hit but I still managed to slash theshoulder of her arm holding the mace. She winced then turned to Jarek raising her mace again, but obviously grimacing from the wound to her arm. Jarek casually tossed one of his knives, aiming for her head. Her shoulder slowed her down, while she was able to block Jarek's first knife she stood no chance against his second one, which Jarek flung at her stomach with almost impossible speed**.** The girl crumpled to the grown clutching her stomach, and then looked down at her wound, completely covered in blood, blood that seemed to just keep coming and coming. She looked somewhat surprised and then shockingly, smiled, well smirked is probable the better for it. Then toppled over, dead.

"That was strange," Jarek murmured, saying exactly what I was thinking, over the years I have not seen many careers smile before their death, usually they just look angry. This girls death was a little easier for me to accept than the girl from District 4, it seemed a little more acceptable since she was hunting us instead of us hunting her. But it still wasn't easy to accept.

"We make a good team," Jarek said trying to smile. Oh, I thought to myself, this was his first kill. Now that I had realized this I could easily see the pain in his eyes.

"Come on," I said in as reassuring voice as I could, then grabbed his hand and headed back to our camp. Kalina and Fabian stood waiting for us at the doorway; Fabian leaned casually against the doorway with his hand holding on to the inside edge of the doorway. Kalina looked tired, and stood stiffly next to Fabian limply holding a sword covered in blood in her hands.

"Kill her?" Kalina asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Kill him?" Jarek asked.

"Yep," Fabian said smiling, almost mockingly. "Well then," he said and stood up straight revealing two knifes he had been holding behind the doorway out of our sight. "I guess this alliance is over," he said as he threw the first knife at Jarek. Jarek, caught by surprise, didn't move away quick enough and was hit in the arm. Instantly I stepped forward with my sword in hand, I was able to get a few steps closer to him while he was still too focused on Jarek to notice me. It wasn't until I was a step away from him that he noticed me coming, he looked shocked at seeing me, and tried to raise his other knife but by then it was to late and I had already stabbed him in the stomach. I didn't even think about it, my conscience never intervened as I moved in to kill him, never tried to give me a reason to save Fabian. It was surprisingly easy, almost natural. It even took me a second to realize what I had done, whose life I had ended. I wasn't even as upset as I had expected I would be after my first kill. Sure I was a little sad about his death, that I had ended Fabian's life, but I was more numb then anything. Maybe it was because I had seen one to many people die today, and that's why I wasn't horrified with myself. Or maybe I was becoming so focused on survival so that killing someone didn't feel as bad as I thought it would feel. It was a necessity after all; Jarek and I couldn't win unless everyone else dies. So we're going to have to kill people.

Kalina. I thought to myself and then looked around in horror, realizing that I had forgotten about her. I looked around expecting to see her trying to kill Jarek only to see that she was gone, running down the street away from the square and away from us. I sighed relieved to see that she was gone. I guess that was why Fabian looked so shocked to see me, because he had been expecting Kalina to kill me. Their alliance really must have not been very close, she must have just hoped that Fabian would kill one of us off and get himself killed in the process.

Jarek was lying on the ground struggling to get up. Quickly I went over to him to see how he was.

"We- have- to –leave" he said struggling to speak.

"Can you walk," I said with an evident tone of worry in my voice.

"Yeah," he said.

I sucked in my breath as I saw the knife stuck in his arm. "We're going to have to do something about that first," I murmured. We still had first aid supplies left from when Stephano had cut my arm, I thought to myself. I didn't know anything about healing but Jarek did, so he could tell me how to fix his arm, I'll just have to pull this knife out first. "Okay," I said "I'­­ll go get our stuff, and then we can fix your arm" I told him.

He nodded, and I ran inside and grabbed our supplies, the second I had I pulled out the first aid kit and picked up the supplies I heard Jarek moan. Worried that the careers had come back I ran outside with my sword in my hand only to see Jarek sitting up holding the knife that he had evidently just pulled out of his arm. Relieve spread through me as I saw that the careers had not came back yet, and I then walked over to Jarek while he examined his wound.

"It really isn't that bad," he declared smiling at me.

"I'm glad to see your back to your usual cheerful self, but I could have pulled the knife out." I said.

"Saves us some time, we really need to leave, I'm surprised the other two careers aren't back yet. We should wait to fix my arm until we're at least a half mile from here."

"Are you sure you won't bleed to death on the way?" I said completely serious.

"I'm positive that I won't," he said laughing. Than sat up, wincing as he did. We left the square heading in the direction I was pretty sure was the exact opposite way from where Lucia and Zeb had gone. We walked as fast as we could away from the square, trying to stay as unnoticed as we could. I could tell that Jarek was in a lot of pain, but he was right, we needed to get as far away from that square as possible. Once Lucia comes back to find two more careers dead she won't be happy.

"Thanks." Jarek said when we had walked about a fourth a mile from the square.

"Jarek, you've save my life multiple times now," I said sounding slightly exasperated, "I'm just trying to return the favor."

"Still," he said smiling "you could have left."

Like Kalina did, I thought to myself. "You could have left me after the feast." I pointed out. "But you didn't."

"That's true," he said slightly smiling.

We were silent for a half mile before I spoke again.

"I think we should probably fix your arm now." I told him. "We're far enough away from them."

"I think that's a good idea." Jarek said looking down at his arm. "But we should leave again after you've stitched my arm up. Lucia and Zeb will definitely be hunting for us."

"Without a doubt." I replied.

**Thanks for reading and please please review.**


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